Our main business is in Open Source computer training - reaching people how to program in Perl, PHP and Python, in Lua, Ruby and Tcl, and on related subjects such as the MySQL database and the Linux Operating system. You can find a full public course schedule (with links to detailed course descriptions)
here, or you can find our about private courses at our training centre
here and at your offices
here.
So many of our delegates come a long way to our courses, and rather than have them head off in different directions to different hotels and B&Bs every night, we opened our own new hotel and training centre in 2006. It's become very popular with people who visit Melksham to see other businesses, and we do a healthy weekend / holiday trade with people visiting their relatives or touring our beautiful area. See
here for our Well House Manor web site.
Until 2006, some 40% of our delegates arrived in Melksham by train, but in that year First Great Western removed all but two trains a day from the timetable ... and now it's just 4% of our delegates who arrive by train and the service is, frankly, an embarrassment. It's also rather silly that a town with a population of over 20,000 and a perfectly good railway has been slashed back in this way, forcing us onto overcrowded and slower roads which are less environmentally friendly. I started a campaign in 2005 (but AFTER the decision had been made to cancel most services) for an appropriate service, and that carries on to this day. We have moved from being considered to be a "basket case" in the early days to having a very high Benefit Cost Ratio in the latest reports for a service that runs as frequently as once an hour. See
here for more details of the campaign and
here for a wider area forum.
When we arrived in Melksham in 1999, we arrived quietly. Our customer base is countrywide / continent wide, and our footprint a small one, so it wasn't necessary of natural to make a big splash. However, our delegates bring business to Melksham, and we fell in love with the place. The hotel brings further natural local involvement, and the train campaign further involvement. Local politics, with the recent changes and economy, lead to a real need for Melksham's businesses to be supported and their case put and so we joined the Chamber of Commerce. And being around the town so much of the time, and happy to 'represent', I have been elected as the President of the Chamber.
All four of these aspects appear on this blog - "The Horse's Mouth" and in the archives too. Regular readers will look and see what happens on a daily basis and skip over articles that are not relevant, and our
newsletter provides a general update every 2 months. But what about people arriving at our blog archives when using a search engine to find out about the Chamber of Commerce. Up until (roll of drums!) this morning, they've come to a page that has appeared to Chamber of Commerce content in an illogical training wrapper ... but no longer. The four logos you see on this page are now selected as appropriate for archived articles, and the top "soundbite" and menus are also tailored. How do we do it? Find out on our
PHP techniques workshop.
Examples of each logo in use:
Weekend and Christmas specials at Well House Manor
Melksham's Public Transport and especially how limited it is on a Sunday
Making your Melksham business a destination (Chamber of Commerce)
Choosing your PHP course (written 2009-10-11, updated 2009-10-12)
Associated topics are indexed as below, or enter http://melksh.am/nnnn for individual articles
G905 - Well House Consultants - Blogging and Blog Administration [1] First Jottings - (2004-08-05)
[6] Blog v Forum - (2004-08-07)
[18] Wanted: More hours in the day - (2004-08-18)
[141] Too technical? - (2004-12-05)
[145] A comment on comments - (2004-12-09)
[177] Blogs come of age - (2005-01-14)
[185] Who am I? - (2005-01-21)
[204] The confidence to allow public comments - (2005-02-06)
[231] Feedback as lifeblood - (2005-02-28)
[245] I'm not blogging it - (2005-03-14)
[359] Chicken soup without the religion - (2005-06-26)
[390] Moderating wiki, blog, and forum contributions - (2005-07-26)
[405] Horse's Mouth is a year old - (2005-08-07)
[410] Reading a news or blog feed (RSS) in your PHP page - (2005-08-12)
[425] Caching an XML feed - (2005-08-26)
[508] Comment, please! - (2005-11-28)
[671] Both ends of the animal - (2006-04-05)
[876] Making pages clearer - easy Disability Discrimination Act Compliance - (2006-09-23)
[1000] One Thousand Posts and still going strong - (2006-12-18)
[1077] In answer to 'am I glad I started a blog' ... - (2007-02-12)
[1203] A Fresh horse - (2007-05-24)
[1978] From spam to mod_alias - finding resources - (2009-01-05)
[2000] 2000th article - Remember the background and basics - (2009-01-18)
[2192] Copy writing - allowing for the cut - (2009-05-21)
[2517] Blogging accuracy - open invitation for any corrections - (2009-11-29)
[2564] Microblogging services - Plurk, Twitter, Jaiku and more - (2010-01-05)
[2751] Going off at a tangent, for a ramble - (2010-05-04)
[2823] Where have all the bloggers gone? - (2010-06-24)
[3016] The legal considerations of your web presence - revisited - (2010-10-26)
[3163] Twitter - the special use of @ # and http: in tweets - (2011-02-09)
[3186] How to add a customised twitter feed to your site - (2011-02-27)
[3208] Links for social media, microblogs and business networking - (2011-03-20)
[3514] Microblogging - what I should have tweeted in the last 48 hours - (2011-11-10)
[3759] The five oldest blogs and the horses mouth - (2012-06-09)
[4000] 9 years, and 4000 articles on - (2013-02-09)
[4121] Has your Twitter feed stopped working? Switching to their new API - (2013-06-23)
[4292] The Horse is back! - (2014-09-15)
[4568] Moderation - and the tendency to over-moderate - (2015-11-02)
[4714] The technical article feed continues - personal updates more proactive on Facebook now! - (2016-10-30)
Some other Articles
Dark to darkMaking executable binaries in Python (or Perl)Gypsy saysFamily Gathering at 404, The SpaFour aspects - Chamber, Transport, Courses and HotelMySQL - efficiency and other topicsMySQL stored procedures / their use on the web from PHPLearn about MySQL stored proceduresSecuring MySQL on a production serverPotted MySQL installation