Finishing Weekend Golfers

In a previous post, I wrote about why Weekend Golfers needed to be treated as a coaching library, not a programme.

That post was about definition, about naming what the product already was, rather than forcing it into a growth or content cadence it didn’t need.

What followed was something different.

This post is about what happens after that decision, when you stop debating positioning and start doing the quieter work of alignment.

The project that never quite felt done

Weekend Golfers has existed for a long time.

The coaching content was always there.

• Solid
• Thoughtful
• Built over years.

But the container around it, the site, the structure, the language, the access model, never quite settled.

It behaved like many long-running digital products do:

• a little bit of legacy here
• a little bit of drift there
• decisions made at different times for different reasons

Nothing was broken.
But nothing was fully resolved either.

It was usable, but not complete.
Functional, but not coherent.

That’s the kind of state projects can sit in indefinitely if you let them.

The decision to consolidate instead of expand

The turning point wasn’t a new idea.

It was the decision to stop adding and start consolidating.

Instead of asking:

“What else should this become?”

I asked:

“What is this already, at its best?”

The answer was obvious once I stopped trying to grow it:

Weekend Golfers is a coaching library.
Not a programme.
Not a funnel.
Not a membership that needs constant updates to justify itself.

A library.

Once that was clear, a lot of other decisions stopped being difficult.

Alignment is quieter than creation

Most of the work that followed wasn’t creative in the usual sense.

It was alignment work:

• section pages rewritten so they orient instead of persuade
• lesson content left alone, because it was already right
• language brought into a single voice
• navigation simplified so people don’t have to think
• admin and sales paths removed from the member experience
• legacy concepts retired instead of patched

None of that is flashy.
All of it matters.

The difference between a usable product and a finished one is rarely a new feature. It’s consistency.

What the testers showed me

I asked a small group of golfers to test the site.

Two of them logged in immediately, which was reassuring, but more valuable than that was what they did wrong.

One ended up in wp-admin.
Another clicked “Get Access” from inside the library and landed back on a sales page.
Both were on mobile.

None of this was user error.
It was UX ambiguity.

That feedback led to:

• a single, simplified menu
• role-aware visibility via Wishlist Member
• removal of sales links for logged-in users
• renaming “Dashboard” to “Coaching Library”
• blocking admin access entirely for members

After that, the product stopped asking users to interpret it.
It just worked.

Content that finally matched itself

One of the most satisfying parts of this process was realising what didn’t need changing.

The lesson content, Richard’s coaching, was already good.

It didn’t need sanitising.
It didn’t need modernising.
It didn’t need re-recording.

What it needed was a container that respected it.

By separating:

• section pages (orientation)
  from
• lesson pages (instruction)

the entire library snapped into focus.

The coaching voice stayed intact.
The product voice became calm and consistent.

Nothing was diluted.
Everything was clarified.

People pages as architecture, not marketing

Another quiet but important decision was how to handle the people behind the product.

Instead of:

• a “team” page
• CV-style biographies
• credibility signalling

I ended up with:

• a single About page for orientation
• a Richard page that explains why his coaching works
• a Steve page that explains why the product is built the way it is

No self-promotion.
No justifications.
Just role clarity.

Once those pages were written, they felt final.
Not impressive — final.

The feeling of closure

There’s a moment when a project stops feeling provisional.

Not because there’s nothing left you could do, there always is, but because there’s nothing left you need to do for it to be itself.

That’s where Weekend Golfers is now.

It’s:

• coherent
• consistent
• intentionally limited
• and durable

It doesn’t need a roadmap.
It doesn’t need weekly ideas.
It doesn’t need optimisation cycles.

It’s an evergreen asset.

What I’m taking from this

The main lesson here wasn’t about golf, or UX, or WordPress.

It was about finishing.

About recognising when a product has already told you what it wants to be, and getting out of its way.

Most digital projects fail not because they’re bad, but because they’re never allowed to settle.

Weekend Golfers has settled.

And that makes it far more valuable than it was before.