Welcome to www.paul-marsden.com

This site is the place where, as a compulsive but so far unpublished writer, I can go public with anything I want to share with the world.

But it’s also a showcase, testbed and development platform for Sites4Doctors, the GP website hosting and management package I began selling to practices and a few other organisations in July 2004 after over three years as Web Development Manager for the NHS in Southern Derbyshire. It was designed in partnership with Local Medical Committees and practices, and has been in continuous development ever since, based both on feedback from users - and on my own experience of working on this site.

Instant web publishing is a joy for anyone who loves writing. With Sites4Doctors, it’s as easy as using your favourite word-processor.

In November 2009 I wrote a detailed description of how the Site Management System works and is administered, with an optional peek into the PHP and SQL code that makes it all happen. You can access this, with or without they techy stuff, from the Website hosting and development page - essential reading for anyone thinking of joining or taking over the business (see bottom of page).

The home page

This page is an introduction to the site and a guide to what’s new - though you can always find the latest additions and changes via Latest updates, accessed via a button on the left. Links to current highlights appear on the scrolling banner at the bottom of every page.

The ’Page updated’ indicator at the top right-hand corner of each page shows when the page you’re looking at was created or last changed (this has replaced the old ’Today’s date’ feature - a pretty clever technical trick when I learned how to do it back in 2001!). If you can remember the title of a page, you can find it via Pages A-Z, also accessed via a button. Because content is delivered from a database rather than from static pages, these pages update automatically as stuff is added, deleted or changed.

You can browse the main areas using the buttons on the left.

The site search form and Advanced search link, also on the left, will find every occurrence of any word or phrase on the site, even in PDF and several other document formats.

The box below is for whatever is lighting my candle particularly brightly at the moment.

Other new(ish) stuff

• My annotated version of The Good Food Guide 2008’s top 40 restaurants list (we’ve so far eaten at four of them - and got married at Number 24!), unlike the Guide’s list, has the page-numbers against the restaurants to save a lot of index-use.
• The page of exercises for stiff necks, shoulders, backs and legs - a workout that really helps when these old bones are punishing me - was updated in April 2008.
• There’s what is developing into a memoir of my early life. As short-term memory gets more unreliable, I’m unearthing all sorts of long-lost stuff from over 50 years ago - even more now I’m in touch with Voltarol. A number of my old schoolmates have contacted me to swap reminiscences after reading this.
• It seems logical to use the web rather than a notebook to record my cookery experiments (and tribulations). Along with many of my favourite recipes and techniques, they’re all in The Online Cookbook.
• There are some serious thoughts on Government IT cock-ups at the end of the Politics page. They’ve been shared with Henry Porter of The Observer (reluctantly) and Sir Alec Jeffreys, inventor of DNA profiling, and fed back to the Department of Justice. My thoughts on capital punishment are on the same page (please read this, Mr President!).

Finally...

I’m actively seeking a partner to share and eventually take over the Sites4Doctors package. Then I’ll be able to retire as a web professional and this site can become solely a personal blog. However, I hope it will continue to demonstrate what the package can deliver. For now, the section on my web hosting and development services stays, and includes an informal, personal account of how the package was developed and how it works - essential reading for anyone considering joining the business.

If you are interested, though, you’d better get a move on. I think I may have found just the partner I’m looking for...