Publishing, visibility, and the content lifecycle

Overview

StretchCode separates status (draft / published / archived) from visibility (public / internal). Understanding how the two interact gives you precise control over what learners see, when it goes live, and how to retire content cleanly.

Status vs visibility

• Status applies to courses, modules, and lessons and answers "is this live?"
• Draft — hidden from learners; visible only to you in the builder.
• Published — live.
• Archived — retired; hidden from the catalog and active builder list, but data is preserved.
• Visibility applies to a course and answers "who is this for?"
• Public — eligible for the searchable catalog, paths, and sitemap.
• Internal — usable within your organization but excluded from the public catalog and sitemap.

A course must be published AND public to appear in the catalog. An internal published course is live for your organization's use but never listed publicly.

Status cascades — but only where you set it

Publishing a course does not publish its modules and lessons for you. Only published modules and lessons appear to learners, even inside a published course. This is deliberate: it lets you publish a course and reveal content in waves by publishing modules over time.

Publish a course

1. Build the course, modules, and lessons; write and review the content.
2. Set the modules and lessons you want live to published (leave later ones in draft).
3. Set the course visibility — public for the catalog, or internal for organization-only use.
4. Publish the course. It records a published time and becomes enrollable; if public, it enters the catalog and sitemap.

Update a live course

Edits to a published course take effect immediately. For small fixes (typos, clarifications), edit in place. For substantial rewrites:

1. Make the big changes to draft lessons or during low-traffic hours.
2. Publish the updated lessons when they're ready.
3. Learners who hadn't completed the affected lessons will see the new content; their progress percentage reflects the current set of published lessons.

Retire a course

To take a course out of circulation, archive it. Archiving removes it from the catalog and the active builder list without deleting its data. Certificates already earned remain valid and their verification links keep working. You can also archive individual modules or lessons to prune a course without archiving the whole thing.

A realistic example

A team launches Q3 Product Training with modules 1–2 published and module 3 in draft. The course is internal so it's not in the public catalog. Two weeks later they publish module 3. At quarter's end they switch the course to archived; it disappears from learners' active lists, but the 40 employees who completed it keep their certificates.

Tips

• Use draft modules inside a published course to schedule content releases without republishing.
• Keep new courses internal while piloting, then flip to public for launch.
• Adding a new published lesson to a course lowers the completion percentage for learners who hadn't finished — communicate significant additions.
• Archive rather than delete; you preserve history and never break earned certificates.

Troubleshooting

I published the course but learners see no lessons. The lessons are probably still draft. Publish the modules and lessons, not just the course.

The course isn't in the public catalog. Confirm visibility is public (not internal) and status is published.

Archiving broke a learner's certificate link. It shouldn't — archiving preserves data and certificate verification links. If a link truly fails, contact support with the certificate serial.