Frequently asked questions

Access / login data

How can I sign up?
To sign up for a free OLEFAschool account, go to the menu “Join/Login” and fill out the username that you would like to use (it will be displayed next to the courses you'll publish on OLEFAschool), the desired password and a valid e-mail address.

You will receive an e-mail with a confirmation link. Click onto this link and then your account will be activated immediately.

I don't receive the e-mail with the confirmation login?
It could take several minutes for the e-mail to arrive into your mailbox. Please also check if the e-mail might have landed in the spam folder of your mail client.

If haven't got the message after one or two hours, you may want to try to sign in a second time (with a slightly different username, because the first one would still be reserved). Verify that you don't have any spelling mistake in the supplied e-mail address.

If this didn't help either, please contact our customer support.

Can I change my username?
No, the system basically does not support changing the username.
If there is an absolute necessity to change it, you may however contact our customer support and check what would be a technical solution in this case. However we strongly recommend choosing the username thoroughly from the start.

Can I change my password?
Yes, simply go to your dashboard, then chose “Account” and click on “change” next to your old password.

What are the advantages of a premium membership?
At the moment, the main difference is that you need to be a premium member in order to publish commercial courses on OLEFAschool. Other special features for premium members may be added during upcoming OLEFAschool updates.

How can I become a premium member?
Go to your dashboard, then click on “Account” and chose “upgrade to premium”. You then need to pay a fee of at least 5 Euro.
Teachers or students of schools using the OLEFA technology can upgrade to premium membership for free.

What is the difference between the diverse fees you can pay for becoming a premium member?
There is no difference. But we would appreciate higher donations.

Editing and publishing courses (general)

How can I write courses on OLEFAschool?
Check out the following tutorial. It describes step by step how you can sign up, create, edit and publish online courses:
www.olefaschool.org/courses/olefaschool_en (English)
www.olefaschool.org/courses/olefaschool_kurs (German)

What is a permalink?
Permalinks are short and static links that can easily be posted into e-mails, forums or blogs in order to lead interested persons directly towards your course. They do not contain any dynamic or personal data (like session IDs) and stay therefor permanently valid.

The first part of the permalink to an OLEFAschool course always starts with http://www.olefaschool.org/courses/... The final part of the link can be chosen by yourself. We recommend to chose a short and representative keyword. A permalink to a course about video cutting could for example look like this:
http://www.olefaschool.org/courses/video_cutting

Is it possible to change the permalink of a course later on?
No, in contrary to the long course name, the system basically does not support changing the permalink.
If there is an absolute necessity to change the permalink, you may however contact our customer support and check what would be a technical solution in this case. However we strongly recommend choosing the permalink thoroughly from the start.

Why would I want people to subscribe to free courses?
The advantage for you would be that you can track how many people have read your course. You'll also see the nicknames of the subscribers.
(At a later moment, it is also planned to add links to public user profiles of the subscribers, with optional photos, contact information... This would allow you to contact the subscribers when you have updated the course or published similar courses.)

Publishing commercial courses

How can I publish a commercial course?
You first need to upgrade to a premium membership. (Go to your dashboard, then click on “Account” and chose “upgrade to premium”.) Afterwards, go to your course and select “users have to pay”. Now you can define the price of your course. After choosing a price, the system will immediately calculate the commission you will earn for every sold course. You can adjust the price of your course at any time.

How do I receive the money I've earned with my commercial courses?
The commission that you earn for every sold course will be credited to your OLEFAschool user account. Once you've reached a minimum of 25 Euro, you can ask for a money transfer to a PayPal account of your choice. (This minimum amount is necessary in order to avoid transaction fees taking the overhand.)

It is required to setup an account at www.paypal.com where the money can be transferred to.

Subscribing to commercial courses

How can I subscribe to a commercial course?
First, you need to sign up for a free OLEFAschool user account. (A premium account is not required.)

Afterwards, click on “subscribe” next to the course you're interested in. You will now see the abstract and the price. If you click on “yes, proceed to payment” you will be redirected to a screen where you can enter your credit card number.

Will my credit card number be stored?
The payment will be directly handled by PayPal, a well known and trustworthy gateway for online payments. Your credit card number will not be stored, unless you explicitly decide to create a PayPal account that you can also use to effect transactions on many other websites. The operator of OLEFAschool or the course owner will never come to know your card number.

Will my credit card be charged automatically?
No, every payment needs to be authorized separately by yourself. An automatic debit of a once used credit card will never take place.

Server, hosting, data security

Are there backups of my data? What can I do if I deleted data accidentally?
Technical backups of all data on our servers are effectuated on a daily basis and are stored for 10 days before being automatically overwritten.

However, at the time being there are no versioning and backups tools implemented on the user end.