Hotel and training centre, Melksham, Wiltshire
High quality accommodation for course delegates, business travellers and the leisure visitor too.

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For 2023 (and 2024 ...) - we are now fully retired from IT training.
We have made many, many friends over 25 years of teaching about Python, Tcl, Perl, PHP, Lua, Java, C and C++ - and MySQL, Linux and Solaris/SunOS too. Our training notes are now very much out of date, but due to upward compatability most of our examples remain operational and even relevant ad you are welcome to make us if them "as seen" and at your own risk.

Lisa and I (Graham) now live in what was our training centre in Melksham - happy to meet with former delegates here - but do check ahead before coming round. We are far from inactive - rather, enjoying the times that we are retired but still healthy enough in mind and body to be active!

I am also active in many other area and still look after a lot of web sites - you can find an index ((here))
Some traps it's so easy to fall into in designing your web site

"Vegetarians' can obviously be catered for" ... obviously. Don't know why they bother to tell us ...

"I hope they haven't paid a lot of money for this" says Lisa, pointing me at the web site of a hotel that's not in Melksham, but is "near" according to their definition. I hope they haven't - or that it's work in progress, with us seeing a site that's being transissioned overnight. Now - no website is perfect, and that very much includes ours. I comment here as a checklist - things to look out for that people may notice. And, yes, things I noticed on this one.

Slow Loading. The home page took nearly 5 minutes. I'm not kidding you. And I have just checked our connection to make sure - 19 Mbits download, 5 Mbit upload and everything else running fast. And every page is slow




Contradictions "BOOK ONLINE NOW. YOU ARE UNABLE TO BOOK THESE ROOMS ONLINE AT THE MOMENT PLEASE RING" and those sentences directly follow each other!




Missing pages and incomplete templates. Click on "Map" for an untailored 404 page - "Not Found. The requested URL /maps/map.asp was not found on this server. Apache/2.2.14 (Ubuntu) Server at www.sitecube.com Port 80". And wording "Your Text" where I suspect that content is missing. And a couple of images which are either stock art or the owner's pretty daughter.




Spellings. "Cancelation", "avalable", "DISSCUSED"




Abbreviations "INT PICTURES" and "EXT PICTURES" - I assume "Internal" and "External". "HEATED POOL & HOT T" - Tub??




False Claims? "Near Bath". 15 Miles, 30 minutes to drive according to the AA. And £37.00 by Taxi. according to taxi fare calculator. "APPROX 1 1/2 HOUR DRIVE THE CITY OF LONDON" ... odd that - the AA says 2 hrs and 18 minutes, 107.4 miles; that's on their "local attractions" page.




Lot of shouting: "WHEN BOOKING ON LINE YOU WILL BE DIRECTED THROUGH A COMPANY CALLED EVIIVO. IF YOU WOULD PREFER PLEASE RING PXXX OR LXXXXXXX ON (01225) 7XXXXX OR (0797X) XXXXXX"




Below the crack. So - what does this cost? I click on the "prices" page and I see lots of terms and conditions, an invite to call for a special deal for very late bookings, and no prices. Then I notice a scroll bar on an internal frame and, sure, if I scroll it I do discover the prices.




Punctuation and capitalisation. Sentences ending with commas. Capitals al over the place. Apostrophes where they shouldn't be.




Lack of clarity: "Please note that we have a miniumum of a two day cancelation policy" - is that 48 hours before earliest checking time, latest checking time, or two clear working days? And if it's a minimum policy, does it mean that you have to give longer notice for some bookings?




And the site breaks the law - sets cookies but didn't ask me ...




Some thoughts there to say "there, but for the grace of God, go I", and to look at your own web site to see if you fall significanly foul of any of the traps the designers of this site have, it would seem, walked straight into!
(written 2012-06-23)

 
Associated topics are indexed as below, or enter http://melksh.am/nnnn for individual articles
M401 - Well House Manor - Seeing how others do it
  [17] Differing tastes - (2004-08-17)
  [514] Crazy Day-sies - (2005-12-02)
  [619] If its Sunday, it must be the Norland - (2006-02-23)
  [693] The on line booking experience - (2006-04-21)
  [699] Extremes costs of getting on line - (2006-04-25)
  [714] Room for Octopuses - (2006-05-08)
  [736] New Tape Librarian - (2006-05-28)
  [966] CSL, KISS and RTFM - (2006-12-05)
  [1011] Well House Manor and Beechfield House, Hotels, Melksham - (2006-12-29)
  [1026] The Wheatsheaf 2, The Bell 0 - (2007-01-09)
  [1091] The Psyche is all wrong. - (2007-02-24)
  [1205] Arrival and Departure experiences - another hotel - (2007-05-26)
  [1287] Work and play at Well House Manor - Football and Shell Shortcuts - (2007-08-02)
  [1301] Plastic or China - (2007-08-12)
  [1333] Kasteel Elsloo - Michelin rated hotel. - (2007-09-05)
  [1347] Wireless Internet Access at hotels - an update and some pitfalls - (2007-09-12)
  [1354] Match the Bedroom to the Hotel - (2007-09-17)
  [1356] Crystal Ball - How long do I need to be online? - (2007-09-18)
  [1374] Maidenhead Coffee Challenge - (2007-10-02)
  [1406] Away or home - which do I prefer? - (2007-10-25)
  [1413] The little gestures that can really count - (2007-10-27)
  [1454] From Sunday to Monday, from Melksham to the Balkans - (2007-12-03)
  [1458] The wrong way to put up prices - (2007-12-05)
  [1525] Just one thing let the service down - but that is my memory - (2008-01-31)
  [1547] New bathing idea for hotels from Hotelympia - (2008-02-20)
  [1597] Comparing hotels - as a guest and from the proprietors view - (2008-04-01)
  [1672] The Composting Cone Challenge - (2008-06-10)
  [1758] Lindors Hotel, near St. Briavels, Wye Valley - (2008-08-18)
  [1915] Quietly putting prices up - (2008-12-02)
  [2007] Launch of Melksham Food and Drink Festival - (2009-01-24)
  [2105] Hire Car, from Atlanta Airport - (2009-03-27)
  [2127] Call in the professionals! - (2009-04-12)
  [2308] A new place in pictures - (2009-07-28)
  [2311] Floor to ceiling - (2009-07-30)
  [2413] Sanity checking the price, and selling up to increase income - (2009-09-21)
  [2441] Not your cup of tea? - (2009-10-08)
  [2502] Monday night, Tuesday night - (2009-11-13)
  [2885] Twenty Questions - (2010-07-24)
  [2911] Feeding the Grockles - (2010-08-09)
  [3054] Longhope Hotel - (2010-11-16)
  [3333] Honesty and a friendly welcome goes a long way - (2011-06-25)
  [3368] Well House Manor hotel, Melksham - recommended to you by our customers - (2011-07-23)
  [3754] Eyes Wide Open - (2012-06-06)
  [3794] Should hotel staff sit on the toilet in the customer bedrooms? - (2012-07-02)
  [3900] The Xxxxx Guest House in Xxxxxxxxxxx - my stay reviewed - (2012-10-20)
  [3963] National TV - Melksham - 9th January 2013, Pre-alert. - (2012-12-27)
  [3970] Comparing four VERY different places to stay - (2013-01-11)
  [3975] Being an amateur hotel inspector helps me run a professional hotel - (2013-01-14)
  [4058] The highs and lows of customer service - Cheltenham - (2013-04-03)
  [4081] Pushing down the advertised price, pushing up the total price charged. - (2013-05-08)
  [4091] A reminder of why we opened Well House Manor for our customers - (2013-05-17)
  [4093] More things to make sure that we do NOT do ... - (2013-05-18)
  [4109] What might you find at a tiny bed and breakfast? - (2013-06-03)
  [4177] Setting and publishing your hours to suit your customer base - (2013-09-18)
  [4245] It always happens to me when I'm in Borehamwood! - (2014-03-06)
  [4255] Making a personal gain from a more expensive business hotel stay - (2014-04-02)
  [4321] Are administration / review charges on hotel guests acceptable? - (2014-11-20)
  [4348] Taking my life in my hands in Swansea - (2014-12-11)
  [4373] A long and disappointing evening - (2014-12-30)
  [4443] Seventh stay away this year - and it's still only February! - (2015-02-25)

G902 - Well House Consultants - Web site techniques, utility and visibility
  [23] Skills and responsibilities - (2004-08-22)
  [32] Web design platoon - (2004-08-29)
  [98] No more 'Error 404' pages. Something better. - (2004-10-24)
  [109] URLs - a service and not a hurdle - (2004-11-04)
  [117] A case of case - (2004-11-14)
  [142] Colour for access - (2004-12-06)
  [165] Implementing an effective site search engine - (2005-01-01)
  [173] Data Mining - (2005-01-09)
  [179] The hunt for unique words - (2005-01-16)
  [182] Your personal Google ranking - (2005-01-19)
  [197] Allow for peak traffic on your web site - (2005-02-01)
  [202] Searching for numbers - (2005-02-04)
  [222] Who are all these visitors? - (2005-02-20)
  [259] Responding to spam - (2005-03-27)
  [261] Putting a form online - (2005-03-29)
  [268] Information request forms, cleaning up spam - (2005-04-05)
  [274] Our most popular resources - (2005-04-10)
  [276] An apology to Mr Boneparte - (2005-04-11)
  [278] Cover all the options - (2005-04-13)
  [284] The Iconish language - (2005-04-19)
  [288] Colour blindness for web developers - (2005-04-22)
  [311] Growth pains - (2005-05-14)
  [314] What language is this written in? - (2005-05-17)
  [320] Ordnance Survey - using a 'Get a map' - (2005-05-22)
  [322] More maps - (2005-05-23)
  [347] Frightening and from-friend viruses and spams - (2005-06-14)
  [348] Graveyard pages - (2005-06-15)
  [369] CMS - the minefield of Choices - (2005-07-05)
  [376] What brings people to my web site? - (2005-07-13)
  [414] Form Madness - (2005-08-14)
  [492] New Navigation Aid - Launch of My Wellho - (2005-11-11)
  [510] Dynamic Web presence - next generation web site - (2005-11-29)
  [528] Getting favicon to work - avoiding common pitfalls - (2005-12-14)
  [533] Bigger Box Campaign - (2005-12-18)
  [649] Denial of Service ''attack'' - (2006-03-17)
  [658] Keeping the visitors happy and browsing - (2006-03-26)
  [681] Mirroring a dynamic site - (2006-04-12)
  [718] Protecting images from theft - (2006-05-12)
  [732] Where is a web site visitor browsing from - (2006-05-24)
  [757] Horse and Python training - (2006-06-12)
  [767] Finding the language preference of a web site visitor - (2006-06-18)
  [800] Effective web campaign? - (2006-07-12)
  [893] Visibility - (2006-10-14)
  [916] Driving customers away - (2006-11-07)
  [976] Santa at the station - (2006-12-09)
  [994] Training on Cascading Style Sheets - (2006-12-17)
  [1015] Search engine placement - long term strategy and success - (2006-12-30)
  [1029] Our search engine placement is dropping. - (2007-01-11)
  [1055] Above the fold - (2007-01-28)
  [1104] Drawing dynamic graphs in PHP - (2007-03-09)
  [1177] Sorting out for a site map - (2007-05-05)
  [1184] Finding resources - some pointers - (2007-05-13)
  [1186] Two new pages / sites - (2007-05-14)
  [1198] From Web to Web 2 - (2007-05-21)
  [1207] Simple but effective use of mod_rewrite (Apache httpd) - (2007-05-27)
  [1212] What brought YOU to our web site? - (2007-06-01)
  [1237] What proportion of our web traffic is robots? - (2007-06-19)
  [1297] Stuffing content into a web page - easy maintainance - (2007-08-09)
  [1437] Above the fold with First Great Western - (2007-11-19)
  [1494] A time to update pictures - (2008-01-03)
  [1505] Script to present commonly used images - PHP - (2008-01-13)
  [1506] Ongoing Image Copyright Issues, PHP and MySQL solutions - (2008-01-14)
  [1513] Perl, PHP or Python? No - Perl AND PHP AND Python! - (2008-01-20)
  [1534] Where in the world / country is my visitor from? - (2008-02-07)
  [1541] Colour, Composition or Content - (2008-02-16)
  [1554] Online hotel reservations - Melksham, Wiltshire (near Bath) - (2008-02-24)
  [1610] PHP course dot co, dot uk - (2008-04-13)
  [1630] To provide external links, or not? - (2008-05-04)
  [1634] Kiss and Book - (2008-05-07)
  [1653] How do Google Ads work? - (2008-05-25)
  [1711] Rapid growth leads to server move - (2008-07-17)
  [1747] Who is watching you? - (2008-08-10)
  [1756] Ever had One of THOSE mornings? - (2008-08-16)
  [1793] Which country does a search engine think you are located in? - (2008-09-11)
  [1797] I have been working hard but I do not expect you noticed - (2008-09-14)
  [1833] Web Bloopers - good form design - avoiding pitfalls - (2008-10-11)
  [1856] A few of my favourite things - (2008-10-26)
  [1888] Find the link - (2008-11-16)
  [1955] How to avoid duplicating web page maintainance - (2008-12-20)
  [1961] Making our things easier to find - (2008-12-26)
  [1970] Plagarism - who is copying my pages? - (2009-01-02)
  [1982] Cooking bodies and URLs - (2009-01-08)
  [2056] Web Site Loading - experiences and some solutions shared - (2009-02-26)
  [2065] Static mirroring through HTTrack, wget and others - (2009-03-03)
  [2225] How important is a front page ranking on a search engine? - (2009-06-09)
  [2332] Formation, des langages Open Source - (2009-08-09)
  [2333] Formaci[83][c2]ón, de los lenguajes de c[83][c2]ódigo abierto - (2009-08-09)
  [2334] Formazione, Open Source computer lingue - (2009-08-09)
  [2335] Ausbildung, die Open-Source-Sprachen - (2009-08-09)
  [2336] Forma[83][c2]ç[83][c2]ão, Open Source computador l[83][c2]ínguas - (2009-08-09)
  [2337] Opleiding, Open Source computertalen - (2009-08-09)
  [2338] Uddannelse, Open Source computer sprog - (2009-08-09)
  [2339] Oppl[83][c2]æring, Open Source datamaskinen spr[83][c2]åk - (2009-08-09)
  [2340] ldning, Open Source dator spr[83][c2]åk - (2009-08-09)
  [2341] Koulutus, Open Source tietokone kielill[83][c2]ä - (2009-08-09)
  [2389] Writing with our customers words - (2009-09-01)
  [2410] Removal of technical resources from this site - (2009-09-19)
  [2519] Status Page / breaks of service in early December - (2009-11-30)
  [2532] Analysing Google arrivals by country of origin - (2009-12-10)
  [2552] Web site traffic - real users, or just noise? - (2009-12-26)
  [2569] How to run a successful online poll / petition / survey / consultation - (2010-01-10)
  [2668] Is it worth it? - (2010-03-09)
  [2981] How to set up short and meaningfull alternative URLs - (2010-10-02)
  [3022] Retaining web site visitors - reducing the one page wonders - (2010-10-31)
  [3087] Making the most of critical emails - reading behind the scene - (2010-12-16)
  [3149] Looking back at www.wellho.net - (2011-01-28)
  [3197] Finding and diverting image requests from rogue domains - (2011-03-08)
  [3367] Google +1 - what is it? - (2011-07-22)
  [3426] Automed web site testing scripted in Ruby using watir-webdriver - (2011-09-09)
  [3491] Who is knocking at your web site door? Are you well set up to deal with allcomers? - (2011-10-21)
  [3532] Sharing the user experience - designing a form with the customer in mind - (2011-11-29)
  [3554] Learning more about our web site - and learning how to learn about yours - (2011-12-17)
  [3563] How big is a web page these days? Does the size of your pages matter? - (2011-12-26)
  [3589] Promoting a single one of your domains on the search engines - (2012-01-22)
  [3623] Some TestWise examples - helping use Ruby code to check your web site operation - (2012-02-24)
  [3734] QR codes with marketing logos embedded - (2012-05-16)
  [3744] Short Web Addresses for Melksham - (2012-05-30)
  [3745] Legal change - You need to obtain user consent if you use cookies on your website - (2012-06-01)
  [3896] An email marathon - (2012-10-15)
  [3974] TV show appearance - how does it effect your web site? - (2013-01-13)
  [4001] Helping search engines with appropriate 400 error codes - (2013-02-11)
  [4076] Web site - fully back! - (2013-04-29)
  [4115] More or less back - what happened to our server the other day - (2013-06-14)
  [4136] How do I post automatically from a PHP script to my Twitter account? - (2013-07-10)
  [4239] Facebook marketing - early experiences - (2014-01-19)
  [4376] Well House Consultants, Well House Manor, First Great Western Coffee shop, TransWilts / 2014 web site reports - (2015-01-01)
  [4401] Selecting RECENT and POPULAR news and trends for your web site users - (2015-01-19)
  [4474] Effect on external factors on traffic to our web sites - an update - (2015-04-26)
  [4492] Almost so wrong, but perhaps it's right for some? - (2015-05-11)


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Alan Turing - 1912 to 1954
Previous and next
or
Horse's mouth home
Forward to
Multiple views in a single appication - sharing common parts of the template - Ruby on Rails
Some other Articles
Ruby of Rails - cleanly displaying model data in the view
Adding validation to form entries and sticky fields - Ruby on Rails
Providing a form to allow the user to add data to the model - Ruby on Rails
Multiple views in a single appication - sharing common parts of the template - Ruby on Rails
Some traps it's so easy to fall into in designing your web site
Alan Turing - 1912 to 1954
Melksham - a new dawn
Ruby on the web - a simple example using CGI
Hello World - Ruby on Rails - a checklist of each step
Fine evening, country walk from Melksham - pictures
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This is a page archived from The Horse's Mouth at http://www.wellho.net/horse/ - the diary and writings of Graham Ellis. Every attempt was made to provide current information at the time the page was written, but things do move forward in our business - new software releases, price changes, new techniques. Please check back via our main site for current courses, prices, versions, etc - any mention of a price in "The Horse's Mouth" cannot be taken as an offer to supply at that price.

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