Selling and running online courses

Courses live under Courses in the Business part of the sidebar. You need the editor role or above, and a plan that includes courses. Learners sign in on your own site with a code emailed to them — they never see the VPress dashboard.

Create and publish a course

1. 1Press New course, give it a Title and press Create course.
2. 2On the Curriculum tab, press Add section, then Add lecture inside it. A lecture can hold a Video link (YouTube or Vimeo — unlisted videos work), Lecture notes and Downloads from your media library. Tick Free preview to let anyone watch that one lecture.
3. 3On the Course page tab, write the Subtitle and Description, add a Cover image (16:9 works best) and set the Price — empty or 0 makes the course free.
4. 4Press Publish. A course needs at least one lecture before it can be published.

Published courses are listed at /courses on your site, and each one has its own page at /courses/your-course. Unpublish takes a course off the site; learners can no longer open it until you publish it again.

Release lectures over time

Each lecture has a Release setting. Days after enrolling opens it that many days after each learner joins, so the course runs as a schedule whenever someone starts. Not before opens it on a fixed date for everyone. Set both and the later one wins.

Quizzes, certificates, reviews and questions

These are separate parts of your plan, so some may not appear for you.

• Quizzes — on a lecture, Add a quiz, then Add question and tick Correct on the right answers. Tick more than one and it becomes "choose all that apply". Learners who reach the Pass mark (%) complete the lecture; every attempt is kept.
• Certificates — issued automatically when a learner finishes the last lecture. Each has a public page at /certificates/ followed by its serial number, where anyone can check it's genuine.
• Reviews — only enrolled learners can leave one, and nothing appears until you approve it under Reviews. You can also Reply publicly.
• Lecture Q&A — learners ask questions under a lecture. Answer them under Q&A; the learner is emailed a link back to the lecture.

Learners, coupons and access

• Students on each course shows who's enrolled and how far they've got. Enroll someone gives a person access without paying.
• Coupons → New coupon makes a discount code, as a Percentage or a Fixed amount, with optional Maximum uses, Last day valid and Minimum spend. A use is only counted once an order is paid.
• Under Visibility, Members only limits a course to people in your client organizations. A members-only course is left out of every public list, search and sitemap.

Build a course in Excel

Import from Excel takes a filled-in copy of the template (Download the template) and creates a course from it: sections, lectures and quizzes. Export to Excel in the course editor gives you the same file for an existing course.

Before you delete anything

Deleting a course permanently removes its enrollments and everyone's progress. Remove on the Students screen does the same for one learner. If you only want a course off the site, unpublish it instead.