If you no longer want to sell your course, bundle, membership, or community and want to prevent previous users from accessing it, you can unpublish it!
Unpublishing a product, like a course or community, makes that product inaccessible. Students do not have access to unpublished or draft products. Expand the dropdowns below to read more about how to unpublish your products by type.
Unpublish a Course
To unpublish a course, you'll need to update the course publish status to draft. Make sure to review Important Considerations before unpublishing a live course.
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From the Admin Dashboard, go to Products
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Select Courses
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Hover over your desired course and select Manage
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Click the ellipses (three-dot icon) and select Unpublish
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Click Unpublish
Unpublish a Community
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From the Admin Dashboard, go to Products
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Select Communities
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Click the ellipses (3 dot icon) next to your desired community and click Edit
Unpublish a Digital Download
Learn more about how to unpublish a digital download and what happens when it is unpublished here: Drive Leads and Revenue with Digital Downloads.
Unpublish a Coaching & Webinars Product
Learn more about how to unpublish a Coaching & Webinars product and what happens when it is unpublished here: Forge Connections and Drive Leads and Revenue with Coaching & Webinars.
Unpublish a Membership
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From the Admin Dashboard, go to Products
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Select Memberships
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Select your desired membership
Unpublish a Bundle
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From the Admin Dashboard, go to Sales
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Select Bundles
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Select your desired bundle
Note
Unpublishing a product will not unenroll existing users. Users will not be able to access the product while it is in an unpublished or draft state. If you later re-publish the course, bundle, membership, or community they will have access again.
If you are on a paid Thinkific plan that includes the bulk unenroll feature, we recommend using this feature for all existing users to ensure they do not contribute to your current user numbers.
When unpublishing a bundle or membership, users will still have access to the individual courses or communities included in the bundle or membership. This is because when a user buys/enrolls in a bundle or membership product, they are enrolled in each individual course and community included within that product.
If you unpublish the bundle or membership, it does not affect the course or community-level enrollments. However, you can always manually unenroll or bulk unenroll your users if needed.
For more, see: How to Unenroll Students and Process Refunds · Bulk Enroll and Unenroll Students
If you want previous users to still have access to your course, bundle, membership, or community but do not want to accept enrollments moving forward, we don't recommend unpublishing the product. Instead, you can set your product to Private to prevent any future enrollments.
You can also set the product to Hidden if you do not want it publicly displayed on your site. Your previous users will still have access to the course through their user Dashboard if a course is set to Private and Hidden.
For more, see: Private and Hidden Products · The Thinkific Student Experience
When you unpublish a course, community, membership, or a bundle, the landing page will still be visible, but the enroll buttons will lead to a 404 page. You have a few options depending on what you want visitors to experience:
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To prevent anyone from coming across the landing page, you can change the landing page URL
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You can remove all buttons from your landing page
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You can redirect your landing page to a different page
For more, see: How to Find and Edit Your Product Landing Page URL · Redirect Your Product Page to an External Sales Page
The behaviour is slightly different when a Digital Download is unpublished. Learn more about it here: Drive Leads and Revenue with Digital Downloads.