2013 Frank Jamison — Legacy Personal Site (Portfolio Project)

This repository is a preserved-and-modernized snapshot of a classic XHTML-era personal/resume website (circa 2013). It’s intentionally “no framework, no build step” — just static HTML/CSS/JS plus a small PHP email handler for the contact form.

For employers/clients, this project is here to demonstrate:

• Maintaining and shipping improvements on a legacy codebase without rewriting everything
• Practical web fundamentals (information architecture, navigation consistency, asset organization)
• Compatibility work: keeping a Flash-era header working in modern browsers via Ruffle (WASM)
• Basic server-side integration for form handling (PHP + SMTP)

What it does

• Serves a multi-section personal site (home, resume pages, portfolio/gallery sections, writing archive)
• Uses shared JavaScript “includes” to keep navigation/header/footer consistent across many pages
• Renders a legacy Flash banner (.swf) using a self-hosted Ruffle runtime so it still displays today
• Provides a working contact form that submits via authenticated SMTP (rather than PHP mail())

How it works (implementation overview)

Static pages + shared UI includes

• Pages are .htm files.
• Repeated UI (header/menu/footer) is generated through classic JavaScript includes (primarily via document.write).
• Shared assets live under resources/.

Key include scripts:

• resources/javascripts/menu.js — primary navigation
• resources/javascripts/resumeMenu.js — resume-side navigation
• resources/javascripts/header.js — loads the Flash header via Ruffle
• resources/javascripts/footer.js — footer markup

Flash-era header, preserved via Ruffle

The banner animation is still the original SWF:

• resources/sfw/header.swf

Modern browsers no longer support the Flash plugin, so pages load Ruffle (a WebAssembly Flash emulator) from:

• resources/ruffle/

resources/javascripts/header.js initializes Ruffle and instructs it to render the SWF. No Adobe Flash Player is required.

Contact form: PHP + SMTP

The contact form posts to:

• contact/sendmail.php

Email is sent via SMTP submission (STARTTLS on port 587 by default), which is generally more reliable than PHP mail() on shared hosting.

Running locally

Requirements

• A web server (Apache/Nginx/IIS/etc.)
• A browser (Chrome/Edge recommended)
• For the contact form: PHP support is required

Avoid opening pages via file:///... — modern browser security restrictions can break script/resource loading.

Recommended local URL

This workspace includes a VS Code task that opens:

http://2013frankjamison.localhost/

To use that URL, configure your local web server with:

• Host name: 2013frankjamison.localhost
• Document root: this repo folder (the one containing index.htm)

Most systems treat *.localhost as loopback automatically. If it does not resolve on your machine, add to:

C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts

127.0.0.1  2013frankjamison.localhost

XAMPP / Apache VirtualHost (example)

<VirtualHost *:80>
   ServerName 2013frankjamison.localhost
   DocumentRoot "D:/path/to/2013FrankJamison"

   # This repo uses index.htm (not index.html)
   DirectoryIndex index.htm index.html index.php

   <Directory "D:/path/to/2013FrankJamison">
      Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
      AllowOverride All
      Require all granted
   </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

Troubleshooting

• If browsing http://2013frankjamison.localhost/ redirects to /dashboard/, you’re hitting XAMPP’s default site (not this repo). Enable Apache VirtualHosts and confirm the DocumentRoot points at this folder.
• If the header animation doesn’t render, hard refresh (Ctrl+F5) and check the browser console for missing files under resources/ruffle/.

Repo layout (quick tour)

• index.htm — home page entry point
• resume/ — resume section pages
• portfolio/, gallery/, music/, poetry/ — content sections
• contact/ — contact form + PHP mail handler
• resources/ — shared CSS/JS/images + the Ruffle runtime and SWF assets

Notes and constraints (useful for real-world maintenance)

Absolute-root links

Many pages use absolute-root URLs like /resources/... and /resume/....

That means:

• The site should be served at the web server’s document root.
• If you host it under a subfolder (for example https://example.com/2013/), many links will break unless paths are rewritten or a base-path strategy is applied.

Character encoding

Many pages declare charset=iso-8859-1. If you edit content, keep encoding consistent across the site to avoid mojibake in older text.

SMTP configuration (deployment)

SMTP can be configured either with environment variables (preferred) or with a local config file.

Environment variables:

• FJ_SMTP_USER — mailbox (example: contact@yourdomain.com)
• FJ_SMTP_PASS — mailbox password (SMTP AUTH must be enabled)

Optional overrides:

• FJ_SMTP_HOST (default smtp.office365.com)
• FJ_SMTP_PORT (default 587)
• FJ_SMTP_FROM (default = FJ_SMTP_USER)
• FJ_MAIL_TO (default frank@frankjamison.com)

Config file method (common on shared hosting):

1. Copy contact/smtp_settings.example.php to contact/smtp_settings.php
2. Fill in real values
3. contact/.htaccess blocks direct web access to smtp_settings.php

If sending fails, the handler can write to contact/sendmail_failures.log (ignored by Git) to help troubleshoot server-side issues.

Updating Ruffle (optional)

Ruffle is vendored in resources/ruffle/. If you need newer Flash compatibility:

1. Download the official web self-hosted build from https://ruffle.rs/ (or the GitHub releases page)
2. Replace the contents of resources/ruffle/ with the new files
3. Hard refresh (Ctrl+F5) and verify there are no 404s in DevTools

Security and repo hygiene

• Credentials are intentionally not committed: contact/smtp_settings.php is ignored.
• Large local “downloads” folders are ignored to keep the repo GitHub-friendly.