Stop selling a course without locking out my learners
Courses have seasons. You rework the material, you're overrun with orders, you retire a class you've outgrown. None of that should punish the people who already paid — so on a bernard site, going off sale and keeping faith with learners are the same move.
How it works
- Say what you want. "Take Glazing at Home off sale for now" hides it; "retire it for good" archives it.
- Enrolment closes; access doesn't. The course page swaps its enrol button for a quiet "Enrolment is closed just now". Every existing learner's link works exactly as before (Let learners in without accounts or passwords) — term dates included (Charge once, or sell a year of access).
- Approve, and reopen whenever. Publishing it again is one ask; the page, the syllabus and the free taster come back as they were.
Behind the scenes, hiding also withdraws the course from your site's machine-readable course listings — no stale "enrol now" signals left for search engines to trip over, which is exactly the kind of tidiness that keeps a site trusted (Give my site a health check). What never changes: a paying learner's way in. bernard treats that as untouchable.
The prompt
“Take my [course name] course off sale [for now / for good]. Existing learners must keep their access.”
The [bracketed] parts are yours to fill in. First time? Log in to bernard → your site → Edit with AI → copy your access prompt, paste that into your AI first, then ask the above.
Questions people ask
- If I stop selling my course, do existing learners lose access?
- No — that's the promise. Hiding a course closes enrolment for new people, but everyone who already paid keeps exactly what they bought: their link keeps working, lessons keep playing, files keep downloading.
- What's the difference between hiding and archiving a course?
- Hidden means off sale but alive — the pages stay up for enrolled learners, enrolment says 'closed just now', and you can reopen any time. Archived means retired for good. Either way, the change drafts first and happens when you approve it.
- Does a hidden course still show up in search?
- No. A hidden course drops out of your course list, your site's course feed and the machine-readable markup — search engines and AI assistants stop being told about it. Its pages stay reachable only for the people who hold a link.