# Courses, ebooks and videos for a sailing school on WooCommerce.

> A sailing school recognised by the UK bodies RYA and MCA sells courses, ebooks and video lessons from its own site. We made sure every student finds what they bought, and only that.

- Sector: Marine
- Practice: Software engineering
- Year: 2025-2026
- URL: https://cloudfactory.it/en/work/online-course-platform-sailing-school/

## In brief

The school sells courses and teaching materials on WordPress and WooCommerce, with a Hello Elementor child theme, ACF and MailPoet. For the flipbook ebooks we changed the download method on those products only; the course-linked student pack, a protected page, appears in the customer's Downloads next to PDF and ZIP files. Pages open only for buyers of the linked product, and order emails show the course start and end dates.

- **2010** the year the school started
- **2** UK bodies recognising it, RYA and MCA
- **3** content types in Downloads: PDF, ZIP and protected page

## Context

The school has been running since 2010 and teaches courses recognised by the RYA and the MCA. Orders come in every day: courses with start and end dates, flipbook ebooks, video lessons. The site runs on WordPress and WooCommerce, with a Hello Elementor child theme, ACF fields for course data and MailPoet for communications.

## The problem

WooCommerce treats downloadable products as files: one link, one download. A flipbook ebook, though, is read in the browser, and a student pack is a page of materials, not a file. Left as it was, students would have found their materials in different places, and a private page reachable by link would have opened for anyone holding that link.

## What we did

1. **Redirect downloads, only where needed.** For the flipbook products the WooCommerce download method switches to redirect, so the link opens the reader in the browser. Every other product keeps the standard behaviour.
2. **The student pack in Downloads.** The course-linked protected page is added to the customer's Downloads list, next to PDF and ZIP files. Everything the student bought is in one place.
3. **Pages that open only for buyers.** Custom code checks that whoever opens the page has bought the linked product. Admins and shop managers always get through, for support and checks.
4. **Course dates in emails.** Course start and end dates, held in ACF fields, appear in order emails. On the product page empty elements are hidden, so no page shows blank labels.
5. **Emails that arrive.** Transactional email goes out through Amazon SES via WP Mail SMTP, with a sending policy dedicated to the site.

## How it went

Every student finds ebooks, videos and course materials in their own account area, and private pages stay private. For the same school we had already built the yacht crew directory.

## Tools

WordPress, WooCommerce, Hello Elementor, ACF, MailPoet, WP Mail SMTP, Amazon SES, PHP

## FAQ

### Can content be protected without a membership plugin?

Yes, when the rule is as simple as this one: whoever bought the linked product sees the page. A few lines of custom code save one more plugin to configure and update.

### Does changing the download method affect other products?

No. The change applies only to the flipbook products; PDF and ZIP files download as before.

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Cloudfactory S.r.l., Rome. Contact: hello@cloudfactory.it