If you no longer want to sell your course, bundle, or community and want to prevent previous students from accessing it, you can unpublish it!
In this article:
How to Unpublish Your Product
When we refer to 'unpublishing a product', we are talking about removing that product by making it unavailable. Depending on the product you would like to unpublish, this could mean either unpublishing it or marking it as a draft. 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.
- Go to Manage Learning Products
- Select Courses
- Click on your desired Course
- Now that you are in the Course Builder, select the Publish tab
- Select Draft
- Click Save
Unpublish a Bundle
- Go to Manage Learning Products
- Select the Memberships & Bundles tab
- Select your desired Bundle
- Select the Publish tab
- Select Unpublish
Unpublish a Community
- Go to Manage Learning Products
- Select Communities
- Locate your community, click the ellipses (3 dot icon) and select Edit
- Now that you are in the Community Builder, select the Publish tab
- Select Draft
- Click Save
Unpublishing a product will not unenroll existing students. They will not be able to access the product, however they are technically still enrolled. This means if you later re-publish the course, bundle, 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 students to ensure they do not contribute to your current student numbers.
Frequently Asked Questions
What happens to course or community access when unpublishing a bundle?
When unpublishing a bundle, students will still have access to the individual courses or communities included in the bundle. This is because when a student buys/enrolls in a bundle, they are enrolled into each individual course and community included within that bundle.
If you unpublish the bundle, it does not affect the course or community-level enrollments. However, you can always manually unenroll or bulk unenroll your students if needed.
What if I want previous students to still have access to my product?
If you want previous students to still have access to your course, bundle, 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 students will still have access to the course through their Student Dashboard if a course is set to Private and Hidden.
What happens if a student visits the landing page for my unpublished product?
When you unpublish a product, 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:
- To prevent anyone from coming across the landing page, you can change the landing page URL
- You can remove all buttons from your landing page
- You can redirect your landing page to a different page