But not just yours. Yesterday I deleted over 4000 members, including you.
Why is that good news?
Visit OnlineItalianClub.com and you’ll notice the “Join” and “Login” options have gone. So no more fussing around with passwords, usernames and so on.
And to access the “members only” material?
Just click the FREE ITALIAN COURSES & EXERCISES link in the menu, and you’ll find a single page listing all our existing resources, over 1000 pages of content plus hundreds of interactive exercises.
Free to use. Open to all.
P.S. If you haven’t been reading your e-mails over the holiday period, check out the FREE Skype Italian lesson offer here. People are already signing up…
P.P.S. As always, your views are welcome. Comment on this article
Dawn Thornton says
Excellent news, I always struggled to log in.
July Rice says
Hello. I need some help regarding what I should purchase. I live in Italy, but do not have much contact with Italians. (Small village.) My main problem is listening comprehension. Please advise me what I should order from your offerings. I am not really interested in grammar or excercises – just listening and vocabulary. Thank you. July
Daniel says
Hi July,
All of the Italian Workout series have listening material, but if as you say listening is your main problem, you’d probably be best off sitting in front of the TV for an hour or so each day. It’s free, and very effective.
Or you could try taking a free Skype lesson: if you like it, and assuming the technology works for you, having a one-to-one relationship with an experienced teacher can be a big help with listening. Details of the offer here.
Buon anno!
Daniel
Nazanin Aliabadi says
This is sad news 🙁 I enjoyed reading and learning from all the e-mails. Now I feel as if I’m going to miss out on everything 🙁
Daniel says
Hi Nazanin,
There’s nothing sad. The site and the emails will continue, just no need to login to access the good stuff.
Buone feste!
Daniel
John Thomson says
Hi Daniel
The only downside is that, secondo me, some members may like to feel that their membership sets them apart from a casual visitor to your site, with some ‘extras’ thrown in. Otherwise anything that makes the site easier to use must be a good thing.
What about another menu option – “HELP DESK” where people can pose a new question on any subject – “site navigation” – “grammar” etc. One of your team could then reply to that specific question, in fact anyone could post a reply if they have something to add to that specific thread. Of course anyone would know where to read any thread, as well as your articles and comments..
I am reading with interest the comments on the Madre Lingua site but I cannot post a comment / reply, is there anyway you can make this happen?
Thanks
John
Daniel says
Ciao John,
I agree that the “end of membership” is a shame. But we were getting 20 spam registrations for each genuine one, and a lot of our best content was invisible to Google, which limited the number of people able to find it.
The help desk idea is a good one, and you have proposed other equally good ideas before. But “the team” is just me at the moment…
There are lots of technical ways we could make the site more interactive… but all of them depend on people actually being interested enough to participate. Nothing worse than an empty forum or discussion board.
So, for the moment the plan is to concentrate on quality content and site design, build the number of users, and maybe try again with the more interactive stuff at a future moment.
As regards commenting on other websites, there’s an important thing you should know….
– a generic “blog” page shows ALL the articles (in date order) but NOT the comments. Like this page
– click on the title of any individual article displayed on the generica page, and you’ll be taken to the article itself, complete with comments and a box to leave yours. Like this one.
Note that on some websites comments are automatically turned off after a certain number of days, which concentrates discussion on the most recent articles, and deters spam.
Hope that helps, and thanks for taking the time to help make OnlineItalianClub.com a better place!
Daniel
Gary Yellin says
Hi Daniel,
I ordered another 10 online lessons, and on that page, the login/join links were still present. When I went to login, it rejected my username and password. I spent too much time on this before just proceeding with the purchase. So if you keep the elimination of the membership stage, someone needs to go through all of the pages and eliminate the remaining login links.
Gary
Daniel says
Hi Gary,
First of all, thanks for continuing to take online lessons with us. We love it when someone renews, and you absolutely deserve the €20 discount!
And thanks also for your input on the membership links thing. Sorry you wasted time…
On the plus side, at least for me, your purchase was yesterday morning, and the technical changes to the website were yesterday afternoon… So what you suggest should be done, is already done!
A presto!
Daniel
bruce benson says
Daniel, thanks for keeping your learning materials available to us. I do use them. For the gal who wants to improve her listening skills, may I suggest a useful site called “News In Slow Italian?” It’s not in competition with Madrelingua and it does improve language comprehension. Happy New Year!
Daniel says
Ciao Bruce,
Thanks for commenting. The site you suggest does seem interesting, but is paid content. For anyone interested, the link is here.
As a teacher (and learner) though, I’d always recommend NOT seeking out “slow” listenings. Life isn’t slow, so it doesn’t help much as preparation for real listenings.
And sub-titles SEEM to help you understand, but in fact have the opposite effect. You’re reading, not listening.
A presto!
Daniel
billone says
Good news, Daniel – I always had problems actually getting into the site (like Dawn above). Even just now, when I clicked on “post a comment” at the start, I was sent to a banner asking me to apply for membership and only found this “speak your mind” section because I scrolled down to the bottom of the page. The same thing would always happen when I got your emails and wanted to get into an article: I was sometimes sent around in circles. Over the past year or so, I have tried to contribute to the discussions etc (including reportingon the aforesaid problems) but was never able to send the message – I have no idea why.
Maybe there are more people like me and Dawn??
Daniel says
Hello Billone!
Occasionally there are technical problems with the site. With any site. But, as anyone who works on a help-desk will tell you, 99% of problems are user-generated, in the sense that there is not actually a software issue but some local conflict (your browswer might be showing you a cached copy of a page, for example) or confusion on the part of the user.
For example, John has been telling me for ages that he was unable to comment. The generic blog page shows only extracts from articles, with no option to comment. To read the full article, and the comments, and to join in the discussion, it’s necessary to click the article title and so visit the “real” page.
Anyway, once we realised what the misunderstanding was, the problem disappeared!
Conclusion, if there’s something you want to do, but can’t, just email me describing (as specifically as possible) what the problem is i.e. what you’re trying to do and what’s happening. It’s always a good idea to copy and paste the page URL (which you can find in your browswer).
Example:
I’m on this page http://onlineitalianclub.com/blog/ and I want to leave a comment. How do I do that?
Answer: you don’t. Click the article that you want to comment on, and scroll to the bottom of the page to view the discussion. i.e. this page: http://onlineitalianclub.com/good-news-your-membership-has-been-cancelled/
Another tip. Try using a different browswer. If you normally use Google Chrome, use Internet Explorer, and vice versa. That helps if your problem is anything to do with the browswer…
A presto!
Daniel