Perltraining.org split into two
Recently I discovered that there is another site with many Open Source related companies and another one which is "Linux" oriented. Whatever that means.
It is strange I have not seen them earlier, but I guess I have not searched for them with the correct terms. Probably I have not searched at all. I was too focused on just Perl companies and then when I stared to broaden the list of technologies I have not looked around.
It should have not surprised me as creating such a directory isn't a very original idea. So I got a bit frustrated. Shall I go on with this directory? Shall I return to the original idea and list only Perl courses and only Perl Training companies? Do I really need to invest energy in this web site? After all I don't think I will make any money out of it and the service it provides exists in those other sites. Probably much better that what I can ever offer.
But it is actually fun. I have not been writing in PHP for a long time and while it is not my favorite language I think I can learn things from writing in it now. If nothing else I can learn much better how to test such sites.
Besides I get in touch with many other trainers while adding them to the directory. I like this personal contact, even if only via e-mail.
So...
I have been working on the site for some time now again. It has improved a lot - thought the GUI is still very ugly - but the code behind it has improved. It is much more maintainable.
As I have started to let companies list course in other open source technologies as well and not only in Perl, I though it would be better to have a separate web site for all the courses and keep only the Perl related courses on the perltraining.org site.
So I made the code configurable. The default is to show all the companies and all the courses on the Open Source Training Directory (www.ostd.net) while on perltraining.org show only Perl Training Courses.
(Since then both of those were closed.)