Echo Deutsch used to open straight into the practice player. That was fine when the site was mainly a tool page. It became awkward once episode study notes, guides, and FAQ copy grew up around the player: newcomers landed in controls and cue lists before they knew what the product was for.
So the homepage and the player are now separate.
What you see at /
The new home page at / is a short tour of Echo Deutsch: what the tool is, how a typical session works, which practice modes exist, how A1/A2/B1 differ, a few episode study pages worth opening, recent guides, and a small FAQ teaser. The primary button is Start practicing, which goes to the player. A secondary button points at the episode index.
If you have practiced here before, a client-only Continue where you left off control can appear when the browser still has a last video or progress in localStorage. It does not replace the server-rendered landing copy — the marketing text stays visible for everyone, including search crawlers.
There is no autoplaying YouTube embed on the landing page. A static layout preview shows the three-column desktop idea (controls, player, cue list) so you can see the shape of the tool without loading a video.
What moved to /practice/
The full player is now at /practice/. Behaviour is unchanged:
- Desktop: controls on the left, video in the centre, cue list on the right
- Mobile: the same options live in the Options drawer
- Dark mode and EN/DE chrome for site labels
- Modes: Watch, Shadowing, Loop, Listen → reveal, Dictation, Bookmarks
- Streak and “lines today” still use localStorage
- Deep links still use
?v=for the YouTube id, with optional&cue=or&t=for a 1-based line
A short crawlable intro sits with the player so /practice/ is not an empty shell for search engines. Unique title, description, and canonical URL are set for both / and /practice/.
Old links still work
Shared links that pointed at the old home player — for example /?v=dC6ZGLzdaTs or the same URL with &cue=12 — must not break. On the static export, the home page runs a client redirect: if the query string includes v, t, or cue, the browser replaces the location with /practice/ plus the same query. On Vercel, matching redirects in vercel.json do the same when query matching is available.
Internal links were updated too. Episode “Practice this episode” buttons, guide CTAs, the header Practice item, and footer Practice all point at /practice/ (with ?v= when a specific video is meant).
Why the split helps learning
A landing page and a player page serve different jobs. The landing page answers “what is this?” and “where should I start?” without forcing a video session. The player page stays dense with controls, which is what you want once you have chosen a mode and a video.
If you teach or recommend Echo Deutsch, you can now share / for orientation and /practice/?v=… for a concrete clip. Episode study pages under /episodes/ still warm learners up with summary, vocabulary, and grammar notes before they open the matching video.
What did not change
Echo Deutsch is still free, still account-free, and still not affiliated with Deutsche Welle. Videos are embedded from YouTube; film files are not hosted here. Bookmarks, theme, and UI language stay in the browser.
Guides and FAQ content were not rewritten for this launch beyond pointing practice links at the new path. The practice modes work the same way they did yesterday — only the URL and the first page you meet have changed.
Quick checklist for returning users
- Bookmark
/practice/if you open the player every day. - Update any personal notes that used
/?v=— they still redirect, but/practice/?v=is clearer. - Skim the new home page once so you know where episode notes and guides sit relative to the player.
- If something looks cached wrong after deploy, do a hard refresh; the player shell and landing styles ship as separate static pages.
That is the whole change in plain terms: a real front door, a dedicated practice room, and no broken deep links.