Share private documents with a document library
A document library fits a case like a security pack. A buyer’s IT reviewer asks for access through a form on a public page, you invite them, and for a set time they can read the pack - and nobody else can.
The prompt
“Make a document library called [name] on my site with these documents: [list]. Access by invitation for [30 days]. Leave it as a draft and tell me how to invite someone.”
Signed in, Get my prompt fills in your site for you. Otherwise press Copy and fill in the [bracketed] parts. First time? Connect your AI to bernard once: Use your own AI (opens in a new tab).
Setting one up
- Create it as a document library. On your courses page, “What are you making?” offers Document library; or ask Bernard for one by name. It starts as a private draft, like any course.
- Add the documents. Each document is written on its own page, the way a lesson’s notes are (Add a lesson to my course). You can also add a film or a recording to a document.
- Open one document to everyone, if you want to. The one open item is marked “Open to all” - a cover note or an overview that explains what the pack is (Let people watch one lesson free works the same way here).
- Set access to by invitation, with a term if access should end - thirty days, a year (Charge once, or sell a year of access explains the term).
- Publish, then approve the draft. The library appears at
/library/<its-handle>/, with its own index page at/library/.
Inviting a reader
Invite only once you have approved the draft and the library is live: the email goes at once, and its link would open a page that is not live yet. Keep a request form on a public page and invite from the requests: give Bernard the person’s email and the library’s name, and they get an email with their way in - a link, not a password. For now that email still uses the course wording: it tells them they are enrolled and their course is ready. The same tools you use for students apply (Enrol a student myself - they paid elsewhere), and if a reader loses the email, A learner lost their way back in applies too.
What is different from a course
No progress ticks, no “next” card, no finished screen, no certificates, no quizzes. The words are documents, not lessons; access, not enrolment. Everything else - who has access, when it ends, the preview, the approval gate - is the course engine you already have (Course, library, client hub or handbook - which to choose).
Questions people ask
- How does someone ask for access?
- With your own form. Keep a request form on a public page (bernard’s plain contact form is enough) and invite people by hand from the requests. There is no built-in request button on the library itself, by design: you decide who gets in.
- What does a reader see?
- The library page in its own words - the documents listed, the one open document marked Open to all, and Access by invitation with the term. Once they open their link they see You have access - your documents are below, and each document says View (or Watch or Listen for a film or a recording). Nothing is live until you publish and approve the draft.
- Can I take someone’s access away?
- Yes - remove them the same way you would remove a student from a course. Access you gave with a term ends by itself when the term does.