Well House Consultants offer training courses in a variety of Open Source programming languages. Public courses will be run at our headquarters in Melksham, Wiltshire. Courses tailored to suit individual client needs can be run at your site. Typically we have good availability if you book three months in advance; occasionally we have short notice availability too, so please do ask!

Courses are all written by ourselves, and lead by our own tutor. We recommend that you limit courses to fifteen delegates so that the tutor has plenty of time to answer any questions that arise, and provide personal support during practical sessions.

 
We offer two PHP weekend courses which are specially designed for delegates who wish to learn PHP or advance their PHP for use on sites which they look after as a hobby or pastime, rather than as part of their paid employment. These courses are the Beginning PHP - weekend and the Intermediate PHP - weekend. (If you are looking for our regular PHP courses - see [here].)

You'll find our weekend all of our courses envigourating and fun - and you'll find that they get the brain cells ticking over too. Our experienced team will be there to help you during practical sessions too, with options for you to write your own sample programs, or if you prefer to take copies of the course examples and turn them to see how they might suit your campaign group, club or hobby knowledge site.

Arrive with us late afternoon or early evening on Friday, and make yourself at home at Well House Manor - our training centre and hotel in Melksham, Wiltshire. The tutor and perhaps other staff will be on hand to greet you and check you in, and show you around the hotel. We'll lend you a laptop for the duration of the course, but if you prefer to use your own the tutor will make sure that you're online and ready to go. Meet the other delegates, have a browse in the library, relax, freshen up and br ready to hit the ground running on Saturday morning.

We provide a superior continental breakfast - freshly cooked crossaints, orange juice that you squeeze yourself (so it couldn't be fresher!), meats and cheeses, cereals, yoghurts, fruit .. and of course toast and marmalade (or marmite!) for the more traditionalists. And there's plenty of tea and coffee - help yourself thoughout the weekend from our bean to cup machine.

Individual course content varies depending on which of the weekend courses we're running but we always start at about 9 O'Clock each day ... on the first day with the tutor introducing himself (his technical self, that is - most delegates will have met him earlier socially), introducting the subject to be taught, and getting the delegates to introduce themselves too and to say what they're looking to learn from the course / where they're looking to develop.

The course is typically split into two morning and two afternoon sessions - and each session will be a mixture of lectures, demonstrations, discussions and practicals - every delegate is provided with a laptop for the duration of the course, sample code to work on, and as much data and coffee as (s)he would like! With groups sizes limited to just eight, even lecture style is informal, with everyone encouraged to chip in. And the tutor makes notes on the board of questions that he says he'll come back to later - so that you can be sure he really WILL come back and answer your questions later.

We provide lunch for everyone on the course too (please let us know ahead of time if you have special dietary requirements) - typically we'll walk out into the town on one day and eat in on the other, but whatever we do, lunch won't take longer than an hour - your with us for a PHP weekend and not for a long lunch!

The formal sessions will end between 5 and 5:30 on Saturday, but the tutor will then be very much available for informal discussions - and you'll have access to the training room and the computer that you're using for as long as you like - you can even take it to your room and carry on working there if you like!

The one thing we don't provide as a part of the weekend package is your evening meal - there's a wide range of options in Melksham, and different people have different wishes. Very often, groups head out to "The West End" or "The Tavern", and you're welcome to bring food from the takeaways into "The Whitworth" breakfast room ... or even phone and have food delivered. We're not licensed for the sale of alcohol, but the Spar (three doors up) will sell you beers, wines and spirits and there's a corkscrew and bottle opener in every bedroom. The tutor's a bit of a hobby / enthusiast for PHP, so is likely to join a group if invited ;-)

Rise with the sun on Sunday morning if you like ... and quietly catch up on what you were studying the previous day. Well House Manor will be staffed (on course Sundays) from 06:30 - breakfast from 7 - and whoever's on breakfast duty will know a bit about PHP too. We're a small hotel, so we're not just hotel staff!

The course restarts at around 9 - a series of sessions in a similar layout and format to the Saturday. Just after lunchtime, the tutor check with the delegates to make sure that he'll have covered all the subjects that are vital to them before they leave - that's to ensure he has an opportunity while there's still good time to fill any missing holes in; towards the end of the afternoon, there will be a more extended practical session to pull everything together for the delegates, and then a summary and look forward from the tutor before closing the course.

You'll be welcome to take any scripts that you've written with you at the end of the course - bring your memory stick with you - or we can email them to you. The tutor often writes new code during the course too, to "show you how it's done" rather than just present you with "here is one I did earlier", and that code can be emailed or if it's of general interest it can be uploaded onto our web site for all to use.

If anyone's catching the 17:21 train, we'll give them a ride to the station (we can do that for the later trains too), and we'll be around again informally to answer any further questions - we won't be rushing you out of the door, as Sunday evening is a busy one for us for checkins for people arriving for the Monday-start courses, and other business visitors to Melksham. In fact - why not stay on for a further night and travel home on Monday morning - we'll extend the delegate rate for that extra night.

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• The course is run at Well House Manor, our own training centre and hotel at Melksham in Wiltshire. Melksham is about 100 miles to the west of London, and there's a suitable train at 17:30 from Paddington on Friday evening, returning at 17:21 on Sunday, or early on Monday morning.

• All of our rooms are double or twin. If two people come together to attend the course, and wish to share a room, the second delegate will only pay the nonresidential rate.

• If you are staying, you are also very welcome to bring your partner to share your room, at no extra cost if (s)he isn't attending the course. There's plenty to see in the area - Bath, Devizes, Caen Hill, Lacock all of which can be reached by bus, but please note that you'll be attending the course, so won't be able to go with your partner to see these places (perhaps you should come back for another weekend?)

• The current (2010) price for these weekends is £564.00 (including hotel room) or £423.00 without. We ask for a 25% deposit with booking - you can book online [here - secure page] or by email or post, or by calling us on 01225 708225 / 0800 043 8225. Terms and Conditions are [here].

• And - most important - if you're not sure which is the right course for you (if either), please phone or email us. We want to make sure that we have people correctly booked, and that everyone is happy and gets the very best from their PHP weekend.