Free course workflow
Building a course that is open to everyone, or to anyone with an account. Start to finish.
Decide which kind of free
| Kind | Configuration |
|---|---|
| Open to the world | No login requirement, no rule, not paid |
| Free but registered | Login required, no rule, not paid |
Open to the world suits samples, marketing and public reference material. It is indexed by search engines and shareable, and you learn nothing about who watched.
Free but registered gives you a customer record and a route back to students later, at the cost of a sign-up step that loses some of them.
Build it
1. Create the course
Courses → Add New. Give it a title, a description that says who it is for and what they will be able to do, and a featured image.
2. Add sections
In the course's Sections repeater, add a section per part of the course. Even a short course benefits — the outline is how students navigate.
3. Create the lessons
For each lesson: Lessons → Add New, then set Attached course, Attached section, the Lesson video type and Lesson video URL, and the estimated time.
Order them with the page-attributes order field.
4. Configure access
For open to the world:
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| To access this course, users must be logged in | Off |
| Global permission rule | None |
| This is a paid course | Off |
For free but registered, turn the login requirement on.
That is the whole of the access configuration. A course with none of the three requirements set is open to anyone.
5. Write the login message, if login is required
Signed-out visitors see the login form. Say why an account is needed and where to create one — the default form does not.
6. Publish
Publish the course and every lesson. A draft lesson does not appear in the outline, and a draft course is not reachable.
Test it
In a private window, signed out:
- Open the course. Open to the world: the description and outline. Registered: the login form.
- Open a lesson. The same result.
Then as a test student:
- Open the course from My courses if login is required, and confirm the access reason reads Free course.
- Open a lesson, confirm the video plays and progress advances.
Publish it properly
A free course nobody finds is wasted work:
- Add it to your catalogue page.
- Link it from the pages it supports.
- If it is open to the world, check the title and description read well as a search result.
What free courses do not do
- No email. A registered student receives nothing on signing up for the course.
- No enrollment record beyond the account itself. There is no list of who started your free course.
- No completion notice, to them or to you.
If the free course exists to generate leads, the lead is the WordPress account. Connect that to your mailing tool with whatever you already use.
Turning a free course into a paid one later
Enable This is a paid course, connect a product, and write the no-access message.
Everyone loses access at that moment, including students who were part-way through. Their progress survives, but their access does not — so either announce it, or leave the free course alone and sell a new one.