Courses

The Course product lets you build structured learning experiences combining videos, embedded slides, text, and downloadable materials. All hosted on your Sherpo site. Each course and lesson can be free or paid and includes progress tracking, completion data, and integrated checkout. If you’re looking for a guide about how Courses appear to users, you can find it here:

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Create a Course product

1. Go to Products → New product.
2. Enter a title, subtitle, and short description.
3. Select the Course tile (video icon).
4. Click Create product to open your workspace.

From there, use the Basic info tab to describe your product, list what’s included, and set a price in Prices. Courses share the same pricing options as other Sherpo product types, and you can offer free or one-time paid courses, create coupons, automations, and enable reviews. For a guide on the product’s Overview, Basic info, and Settings tabs, check this out:

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Manage lessons and chapters

Open the Lessons tab to build your course structure.

• Add Chapter — Use the Add Chapter button to name and create a new section, and a new lesson inside it. Chapters will group related lessons into sections.
• Add Lesson — Creates new content pages within each chapter or stand-alone.

Each lesson can include video, slides, text, and downloadable materials. Lessons display title, video duration, file size, and visibility at a glance. You can rename lessons at any time.

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Add a new lesson

Click Add Lesson to create a new page inside your course. Each lesson includes three tabs:

1. General — Basic info (title, subtitle, poster, visibility).
2. Content — Main body (video, slides, and description).
3. Extra — Additional downloadable resources.

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General tab

Define the public-facing attributes of your lesson.

• Add a poster image (recommended 16:9, up to 5 MB). This will be your lesson’s thumbnail, and it will appear as a static image in the video, before users press play.
• Use the Publicly available toggle to make a lesson accessible without purchase.

Making a lesson publicly available is ideal for introductions, free previews, or teaser lessons.

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Content tab

Upload or embed the main content of your lesson.

• Video — Upload .mp4 or .mov files up to 5 GB. Sherpo hosts and optimizes them for playback.
• Slideshow — Upload .pdf presentations (up to 250 MB) to display inline.
• Description — Add lesson notes, transcripts, or text with rich formatting and embeds.

Once you embed slides, you can also enable Downloadable slides, letting users download the PDF if desired. Please note that downloadable slides do not have PDF Security. If you want to watermark your downloadable slides, do not enable the toggle and instead upload them in the extra resources. Note that for videos, slides and files to upload correctly you must first update the lesson and wait for them to finish uploading.

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Extra tab

Attach extra resources like PDFs, ZIPs, or templates. These will appear on the right-side of the courses, below all chapters and lessons, in the “What you get” section of the user’s lesson page. You can upload up to 7 files per lesson with a combined file size limit up to 5 GB. You can also protect these files using PDF Security and XLSX Security. To enable them, first upload the files, then return to the lesson and activate security by clicking the icon. You don’t need to click Update: if the toggle is blue, the protection is active.

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Add a chapter

Use chapters to group related lessons into sections, which can then be named.

1. Click Add Chapter.
2. Enter a chapter name.
3. Press Add Chapter to save and enter the creation of its first lesson.

You can only move lessons up, and you can add lessons before or after. If a lesson is not in a chapter, you can move it inside one.

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Drafts and publishing

Lessons can exist as Drafts or Published.

• Drafts stay hidden from users, but can be seen by you in Admin mode.
• Publishing a lesson instantly makes it live within the course.

You can publish or unpublish individual lessons anytime, even after the course is live. When editing a draft lesson, click Update to keep it as draft, or Update and Publish to publish it for everyone.

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Course settings

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Course-specific

Under Settings → Course-specific, you can customize progress tracking and course behavior.

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Progress tracking

• No tracking — Disables progress indicators.
• Manual — Users mark lessons as complete themselves.
• On lesson open — Automatically marks lessons complete once opened.
• On content completion — Auto-completes when a video ends or slides reach the last page.

Sherpo tracks progress per user and displays completion percentages in the dashboard and course view.

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Product page

Under your product’s Settings tab, you can customize what appears on the live product view. There are two key toggles:

• Hide reviews — disables customer reviews and prevents new ones from being submitted.
• Sales counter — displays the total number of transactions for a course, including free unlocks and discounted purchases. When enabled, this powers the “N sales” line, giving your page subtle social proof.

You can adjust these at any time; changes apply immediately to your live product page.

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Add a cover or preview

Use the Cover tab to upload a preview video or images representing your course. Covers appear on the product landing page, below the title. You can upload:

• One video (up to 5 GB).
• Multiple images (up to 5 MB each).

Sherpo automatically generates previews and displays them in your course header.

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Add files and links

Files and links in Course products work exactly as they do for Download products. See it here:

Files and links

Discover how to add files and links to your Course.

Click here

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Video security

Videos uploaded to Sherpo are automatically protected by Sherpo’s infrastructure.

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Core protections

• Pay-wall enforcement — Videos in pay-walled lessons are viewable only to customers who have unlocked the product.
• Tokenized playback — Each viewer receives a short-lived, session-bound URL. Shared links expire and cannot be reused elsewhere.
• Domain restrictions — Videos play only on your Sherpo site or verified custom domain. External embedding or hotlinking fails automatically.

These protections ensure your hosted videos remain exclusive to legitimate customers who have unlocked the product.

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Publish and sell

When your content is ready:

1. Set each lesson to Published.
2. Add pricing in Prices, and configure coupons if needed.

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Customer experience

Once published:

• Visitors can view your product cover, description, chapters, lessons, and price.
• Users can purchase and instantly unlock all the course lessons.
• Each purchase is secure and scoped to their account.
• Sherpo syncs progress tracking automatically.
• Sales appear under Product → Sales.

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Best practices

• Keep lesson videos under 15 minutes for better engagement.
• Add short summaries in the description.
• Use On content completion for self-paced or video-heavy courses.
• Update lessons over time: changes apply instantly for enrolled users.
• Use public lessons as free previews to improve conversions.

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FAQ