Welcome Visitor
Welcome to the official website for Michael Andrei Trimm. Thank you for visiting. Begin your official introduction by reading my history writeup. It has a lot of unique facts about who I am and where I have gone throughout my life. Then, you're ready check out some of the stuff I've published.
How I Created This Website
For the purpose of understanding how I function when I am working, the following is a recreate of the steps I performed to create this website. The programs I used to create this website are Adobe Fireworks CS5 (herein and set forth Fireworks) and Coda (Web Development IDE). I first began the project of pulling out a pen and pad of paper and sketching rough designs and ideas of a User Interface (herein and set forth UI) that could work with my type of site. Of these designs I evaluated components of the display for the header, content, and footer.
Each section had a function and each section required to flow with the others. For a portfolio website whose purpose is to promote the profitability of myself, I decided to include a photograph of myself in order to add a personal effect so you connect with what I've done. I then finalized the drawing UI and created a rough mockup in Fireworks that consisted of text fields, bitmap images, gradient boxes, and special effects. After recreating the UI in a presentable form in Fireworks I then proceeded to extract the pieces of the UI from Fireworks into Portable Network Graphics (herein set forth .png) files. These files would require HTML/CSS and Javascript to compile the UI into a usable form.
I opened Coda on my Mac and began typing away, first declaring the DOCTYPE as HTML5. Creating a foundation for HTML, CSS, and Javascript I included the necessary UI components and began writing the code. After the code was completed it needed a home to live in. I purchased a domain name from Netfirms, Inc and registered it as michaeltrimm.com. From there I modified its DNS records to point to Media Temple (my hosting company)'s name servers. By pointing the name servers to MediaTemple, I would be able to type in michaeltrimm.com and access the files stored on that machine. After the domain name propagated enough to even remotely work on my end, I added the domain name to my account in Media Temple and proceeded to create the hosting account. Once the account was created and an SSH username and password was assigned to the project I configured Coda to automatically upload the files that I created. Once the framework of the site was created, I needed to extend it to support multiple pages that loaded from a single file.
Using mod_rewrite (an Apache module) I modified the incoming URL to replace plaintext.html with index.php?page=plaintext and dynamically modified the plain HTML file I had created with PHP code to run a simple switch statement on the URL argument page. That switch statement allows me to encase the content of each page between a case and break command. Thus, updating the site's UI only occurs in one file, and adding/updating/deleting pages is as simple as modifying one file.
I have found that by running a template based UI design the most effective work can be performed with the application. Since the likelihood of this website becoming the next Facebook is negative, the use for external file templating was unnecessary and just a waste of server resources. But, as a result of this very long description into the work that is performed in replicating this site, you now have an inside look into how I analyze situations and produce tangible, realistic results for them to work with. I hope you enjoy my website.
Thank you for your time,
