The headline on our story reads "We've got a New Online Booking System for our Open Source courses" ... but there's a story behind that headline.

We pride ourselves in our flexibility - the ability to treat each customer as an individual and offer him a solution to meet his or her needs. And that means that we're likely to ask each and every delegate booking a course with us a whole string of questions - some to establish that he or she is booking on the right course (not something too advanced or basic), whether she or he prefers to work at a Linux system, with a Mac, or with Windows Vista, whether a station pickup is required and if there are any special dietary requirements, and whether a hotel room is wanted - if so, bath or shower preferred? But our flexibility leads to the danger of a very complex online booking system!

"KISS" - "Keep it Simple, Stupid" ... a 4 letter acronym! A booking system needs to be simple and easy to use - and our new one is.

• On the first page, simply fill in the names of the delegates you want to send on each course, and if necessary check a box if they don't want a hotel room.

• On the second page, fill in the contact details of the person who's making the booking, and an order number.

• And on the third page, tell us how you want to pay. If that's by credit or debit card, the whole of the booking system is using a secure site so you can enter the details.

• The final page isn't a form - it's a confirmation. Yes, it's that easy! You'll get an automated email to let you know that your order is in the system.

You'll also get a nice note from Lisa, thanking you for your booking and dealing with many of the things that we're very flexible about - and it will be personalised. Book from outside the UK and Lisa will ask you whether you need directions from the airport, or a taxi. Book from one of our regular client companies, and she'll know how you PO system works .. or from a new company but requesting to pay on account, and she'll set that ball rolling.

Our conundrum of how to keep it straightforward, and yet provide the flexibility, isn't unique to us - in fact it's a common feature of most customer-aware businesses. When I book a train ticket and I'm offered (as I was the other day) 37 different fares for the same journey on the same train, I take an object lesson and say "please let this be a reminder to me to make sure that our system NEVER gets like that".

Go on - try it out ... why not find a course and book it today!
(written 2008-05-07 12:22:41)

 G301 - Well House Consultants - Booking a Public Courses
  [2352] Printed Directories - the start of the updating season - (2009-08-12)
  [2278] First courses for 2010 - (2009-07-10)
  [1932] Training Passports - booking a training program - (2008-12-09)
  [1693] July to December 2008 - Open Source training schedule - (2008-07-01)
  [1555] Advanced Python, Perl, PHP and Tcl training courses / classes - (2008-02-25)
  [1193] Dangerous Dogs and Hotel Marketing - (2007-05-19)
  [664] Ruby course - oops - it's not happening - (2006-04-01)
  [487] On line course booking - credit card protection - (2005-11-06)

G902 - Well House Consultants - Web site techniques, utility and visibility
  [2668] Is it worth it? - (2010-03-09)
  [2569] How to run a successful online poll / petition / survey / consultation - (2010-01-10)
  [2552] Web site traffic - real users, or just noise? - (2009-12-26)
  [2532] Analysing Google arrivals by country of origin - (2009-12-10)
  [2519] Status Page / breaks of service in early December - (2009-11-30)
  [2410] Removal of technical resources from this site - (2009-09-19)
  [2389] Writing with our customers words - (2009-09-01)
  [2341] Koulutus, Open Source tietokone kielillä - (2009-08-09)
  [2340] ldning, Open Source dator språk - (2009-08-09)
  [2339] Opplæring, Open Source datamaskinen språk - (2009-08-09)
  [2338] Uddannelse, Open Source computer sprog - (2009-08-09)
  [2337] Opleiding, Open Source computertalen - (2009-08-09)
  [2336] Formação, Open Source computador línguas - (2009-08-09)
  [2335] Ausbildung, die Open-Source-Sprachen - (2009-08-09)
  [2334] Formazione, Open Source computer lingue - (2009-08-09)
  [2333] Formación, de los lenguajes de código abierto - (2009-08-09)
  [2332] Formation, des langages Open Source - (2009-08-09)
  [2225] How important is a front page ranking on a search engine? - (2009-06-09)
  [2065] Static mirroring through HTTrack, wget and others - (2009-03-03)
  [2056] Web Site Loading - experiences and some solutions shared - (2009-02-26)
  [1982] Cooking bodies and URLs - (2009-01-08)
  [1970] Plagarism - who is copying my pages? - (2009-01-02)
  [1961] Making our things easier to find - (2008-12-26)
  [1955] How to avoid duplicating web page maintainance - (2008-12-20)
  [1888] Find the link - (2008-11-16)
  [1856] A few of my favourite things - (2008-10-26)
  [1833] Web Bloopers - good form design - avoiding pitfalls - (2008-10-11)
  [1797] I have been working hard but I do not expect you noticed - (2008-09-14)
  [1793] Which country does a search engine think you are located in? - (2008-09-11)
  [1756] Ever had One of THOSE mornings? - (2008-08-16)
  [1747] Who is watching you? - (2008-08-10)
  [1711] Rapid growth leads to server move - (2008-07-17)
  [1653] How do Google Ads work? - (2008-05-25)
  [1630] To provide external links, or not? - (2008-05-04)
  [1610] PHP course dot co, dot uk - (2008-04-13)
  [1554] Online hotel reservations - Melksham, Wiltshire (near Bath) - (2008-02-24)
  [1541] Colour, Composition or Content - (2008-02-16)
  [1534] Where in the world / country is my visitor from? - (2008-02-07)
  [1513] Perl, PHP or Python? No - Perl AND PHP AND Python! - (2008-01-20)
  [1506] Ongoing Image Copyright Issues, PHP and MySQL solutions - (2008-01-14)
  [1505] Script to present commonly used images - PHP - (2008-01-13)
  [1494] A time to update pictures - (2008-01-03)
  [1437] Above the fold with First Great Western - (2007-11-19)
  [1297] Stuffing content into a web page - easy maintainance - (2007-08-09)
  [1237] What proportion of our web traffic is robots? - (2007-06-19)
  [1212] What brought YOU to our web site? - (2007-06-01)
  [1207] Simple but effective use of mod_rewrite (Apache httpd) - (2007-05-27)
  [1198] From Web to Web 2 - (2007-05-21)
  [1186] Two new pages / sites - (2007-05-14)
  [1184] Finding resources - some pointers - (2007-05-13)
  [1177] Sorting out for a site map - (2007-05-05)
  [1104] Drawing dynamic graphs in PHP - (2007-03-09)
  [1055] Above the fold - (2007-01-28)
  [1029] Our search engine placement is dropping. - (2007-01-11)
  [1015] Search engine placement - long term strategy and success - (2006-12-30)
  [994] Training on Cascading Style Sheets - (2006-12-17)
  [976] Santa at the station - (2006-12-09)
  [916] Driving customers away - (2006-11-07)
  [893] Visibility - (2006-10-14)
  [800] Effective web campaign? - (2006-07-12)
  [767] Finding the language preference of a web site visitor - (2006-06-18)
  [757] Horse and Python training - (2006-06-12)
  [732] Where is a web site visitor browsing from - (2006-05-24)
  [718] Protecting images from theft - (2006-05-12)
  [681] Mirroring a dynamic site - (2006-04-12)
  [658] Keeping the visitors happy and browsing - (2006-03-26)
  [649] Denial of Service ''attack'' - (2006-03-17)
  [533] Bigger Box Campaign - (2005-12-18)
  [528] Getting favicon to work - avoiding common pitfalls - (2005-12-14)
  [510] Dynamic Web presence - next generation web site - (2005-11-29)
  [492] New Navigation Aid - Launch of My Wellho - (2005-11-11)
  [414] Form Madness - (2005-08-14)
  [376] What brings people to my web site? - (2005-07-13)
  [369] CMS - the minefield of Choices - (2005-07-05)
  [348] Graveyard pages - (2005-06-15)
  [347] Frightening and from-friend viruses and spams - (2005-06-14)
  [322] More maps - (2005-05-23)
  [320] Ordnance Survey - using a 'Get a map' - (2005-05-22)
  [314] What language is this written in? - (2005-05-17)
  [311] Growth pains - (2005-05-14)
  [288] Colour blindness for web developers - (2005-04-22)
  [284] The Iconish language - (2005-04-19)
  [278] Cover all the options - (2005-04-13)
  [276] An apology to Mr Boneparte - (2005-04-11)
  [274] Our most popular resources - (2005-04-10)
  [268] Information request forms, cleaning up spam - (2005-04-05)
  [261] Putting a form online - (2005-03-29)
  [259] Responding to spam - (2005-03-27)
  [222] Who are all these visitors? - (2005-02-20)
  [202] Searching for numbers - (2005-02-04)
  [197] Allow for peak traffic on your web site - (2005-02-01)
  [182] Your personal Google ranking - (2005-01-19)
  [179] The hunt for unique words - (2005-01-16)
  [173] Data Mining - (2005-01-09)
  [165] Implementing an effective site search engine - (2005-01-01)
  [142] Colour for access - (2004-12-06)
  [117] A case of case - (2004-11-14)
  [109] URLs - a service and not a hurdle - (2004-11-04)
  [98] No more 'Error 404' pages. Something better. - (2004-10-24)
  [32] Web design platoon - (2004-08-29)
  [23] Skills and responsibilities - (2004-08-22)

H116 - Shopping Cart Application in PHP
  [1623] PHP Techniques - a workshop - (2008-04-26)
  [1487] Efficient PHP applications - framework and example - (2007-12-28)
  [1321] Resetting session based tests in PHP - (2007-08-26)

H302 - PHP - MVC, 4 layer model and templating
  [2221] Adding a newsfeed for your users to a multipage PHP application - (2009-06-06)
  [2199] Improving the structure of your early PHP programs - (2009-05-25)
  [2174] Application design in PHP - multiple step processes - (2009-05-11)
  [1766] Diagrams to show you how - Tomcat, Java, PHP - (2008-08-22)
  [1716] Larger applications in PHP - (2008-07-22)

Back to Changing a screen saver from a web page (PHP, Perl, OSX)

Previous and next or Horse's mouth home

Forward to Spring in Devizes

Pictures far apart
Providing exceptional service - and carrying on doing so.
What to do if the Home Page is missing
Spring in Devizes
Kiss and Book
Changing a screen saver from a web page (PHP, Perl, OSX)
Lua - a powerful, up and coming scripting language
Looking back through some photos
A short introduction to our courses