Need to set up your Thinkific online course and website fast? We've got you covered. Read on to learn the essential steps to getting your course launched on Thinkific.
In this article:
Sign Up for a Thinkific Account
Before you get started...
This guide will cover the essentials only - Thinkific has powerful features that enable you to customize and fine-tune, but if you're in a hurry, save it for later.
Now, let's get started!
Sign Up for a Thinkific Account
You can sign up FREE here - you'll need an account to follow along with this guide. Thinkific is free to get started with - no credit card required.
Thinkific paid plans unlock features you may need to launch with - browse Thinkific pricing plans here to determine if you need to upgrade before getting started.
Create Your Online Course
First things first, you'll need to create a new course! When you sign up for Thinkific, you'll land on the Admin Dashboard where you can access every aspect of your Thinkific course website. From here, you can get started on your course as follows:
- Go to Manage Learning Content
- Select Courses
- Select + New Course
- Name your course - this can be changed later
For more detailed instructions, check out: Creating a Course
Add lessons to your course
Thinkific courses are made up of Chapters which contain Lessons.
After creating a course, you'll begin editing it in the Course Builder. You can add lessons from the Curriculum tab or the Bulk Importer tab if you want to upload several files at once.
From the Curriculum tab:
- Select Add Chapter
- Name the Chapter & select Save
- In the new Chapter, select Add Lesson
- Choose a lesson type
- Name your new lesson
- Add your content (how will depend on which lesson you created)
- (Optional) Configure the Lesson Settings
Explore the different lesson types here: Thinkific Lesson Types
Customize your Course Player
The Course Player is where students view your lessons - the part of your site where they can watch videos, take quizzes, and more! You can customize this with your personal branding by adding a logo, changing the color and font.
From your Admin Dashboard:
- Go to Manage Learning Content
- Select Courses
- Select Player Settings
- Make your changes and Save to confirm them
You can learn more here: The Thinkific Course Player
Customize Your Site
Now that you have created your course, you can get started on your site pages. Thinkific's Site Builder allows you to fully customize your course website's pages with images, branding and more!
For a quick set up, we'll take you through customizing the essentials: your course's landing page and website home page.
Customize your course's landing page
Each course has a landing page (i.e. sales page) created for it automatically. You can edit this page in Site Builder, which can be accessed from the Admin Dashboard or the Course Builder.
- Go to Design Your Site
- Select Site Builder
- In the Site Builder menu, select Courses to see your landing pages
- Select the page you want to edit (i.e. select your course's name)
When editing a course's landing page:
- Edit your Theme Settings to add a logo, brand colors, fonts, etc.
- Customize the Header for your course website
- Customize the Banner section
- Customize the Footer for your course website
- (Optional) Add, reorder, or delete sections on the page
Check out Site Builder Sections for an overview of section types and learn more about setting up your landing page here: Build a Course Landing Page
Customize your course website's home page
Home pages direct your website's visitors to the right place. They're useful if you plan to create and offer more than one online course.
First, decide if you're going to create more than one course.
If you do plan on creating multiple courses, then get started editing your home page in Site Builder:
- Go to Design Your Site
- Select Site Builder
- In the Site Builder menu, select Home page
For an in-depth guide see: Build Your Home Page
Or, if you are creating only one course for now, we recommend using a home page redirect to send visitors from the home page to your course landing page instead. This way you don't need to spend time customizing your home page!
- Edit your Home page
- Select Redirect
- Choose Course page from the drop-down menu
- Choose a course's name from the list
Learn more here: Understanding Home Page Redirects
Customize your site name and URL
Your site's name and Thinkific URL can be changed at any time, but it's best to set this up before launching to avoid confusing your students. You can change the site name and URL in the Settings page.
- Go to Settings
- Under Site Details, you can edit the Site name field
- Save your new site name
- Under Site URL, click the ellipses ⋮ button and select Edit URL
- Edit the My Thinkific URL field
- Save your new URL
If you want to remove the '.thinkific.com' part of the URL, you can add a Custom Domain on any paid plan.
Publish Your Course
Great! You've set up all the essentials and are ready to add the final touches to publish your course and start sharing it with your audience.
Price your course
If your course is free, you don't need to do anything (this is the default setting). Skip to the next section.
If you want to sell your online course, you will first need to connect a payment processor:
After setting up a payment processor, you can set a price for your course:
- Go to Manage Learning Content
- Select Courses
- Click on the course you want to edit
- Select the Pricing tab
- Select One-time payment, Subscription / Membership, or Payment Plan
- Enter a price and Save it
Learn about the different price options here: Set Your Course Pricing
Customize your course image and description
Your course image and description will be used in link previews on social media, and in your checkout. It's like a tiny sales page for your course.
- Go to Manage Learning Content
- Select Courses
- Click on the course you want to edit
- Select the Settings tab
- Select Course image and description
- Upload an image for the card (760 pixels by 420 pixels)
- Write a description for the card (Max 250 characters)
- Save your course card
See this article for more details: Edit Your Course or Bundle Image & Description
Publish your course
Publishing a course makes it visible to visitors and allows students to enroll! Courses can be unpublished at any time, but this removes visibility to students as well.
To publish your course:
- Go to Manage Learning Content
- Select Courses
- Click on the course you want to edit
- Go to the Publish tab
- Under Course publish status, select Published
- Save to publish the course.
To learn more about publishing, check out: Publishing Your Course
Share your course
You can send the published course to anyone by sharing the link to:
- Your home page (which looks like https://course-site.thinkific.com or your custom domain)
- Your course landing page (see how to copy your course landing page link here)
- Or share the link to your course checkout instead!
Nice work 🎉 you've launched your online course!