FCJamison.com — Flask Portfolio Site

Live site: https://www.fcjamison.com

Developer-focused Flask + Jinja2 portfolio site. The homepage is server-rendered, static assets live under static/, and the Contact / Blog Reply forms submit via AJAX and send notification email via SMTP.

Quick start (Windows + VS Code)

1. Ensure you have a local venv with deps installed (see Manual setup below).

2. Run the VS Code task Dev: Flask + Open Browser

• Starts the dev server (Flask: Run (dev server)) and opens the browser

3. Open:

• http://fcjamison.comv2026.localhost:5000/

Note: *.localhost typically resolves to 127.0.0.1 without editing hosts files.

Manual setup

Prereqs

• Python 3.x

Create venv + install deps

python -m venv .venv
.\.venv\Scripts\python.exe -m pip install -U pip
.\.venv\Scripts\python.exe -m pip install -r requirements.txt

Run the app

$env:FLASK_DEBUG='1'
$env:HOST='127.0.0.1'
$env:PORT='5000'
& .\.venv\Scripts\python.exe .\app.py

Then open http://127.0.0.1:5000/ (or http://fcjamison.comv2026.localhost:5000/).

Configuration

.env (local/dev)

Local development supports a repo-root .env file (loaded by python-dotenv) as long as you are not in production mode (ENV/FLASK_ENV != production).

Flask

• HOST (default: 127.0.0.1)
• PORT (default: 5000)
• FLASK_DEBUG (1/0)

SEO / multi-site

These settings let you reuse the same codebase across multiple sites by configuring branding/metadata via env vars (no template edits required).

• SITE_URL (recommended in production) — absolute public root URL like https://example.com (used for sitemap/robots when behind a proxy).
• SITE_NAME — site name (used for OpenGraph + JSON-LD).
• SITE_OWNER_NAME — author/owner name.
• SITE_OWNER_EMAIL — optional (used in JSON-LD as mailto:).
• SITE_DEFAULT_TITLE — default <title> when a page doesn’t override headTitle.
• SITE_TITLE_SUFFIX — appended to the title (set to empty to disable).
• SITE_DEFAULT_DESCRIPTION — default meta description when a page doesn’t override headDescription.
• SITE_LOGO_PATH — static path for logo (relative to static/), default images/logo/logo.png.
• SITE_OG_IMAGE_URL — optional absolute URL to use for og:image/twitter:image.
• SITE_TWITTER_HANDLE — optional, @handle.

Sitemap controls:

• SITEMAP_INCLUDE_PROJECTS — 1/0 (default: 1).
• SITEMAP_PATHS — extra on-site paths to include (comma or newline separated), e.g. /about,/contact.
• SITEMAP_URLS — extra absolute URLs to include (comma or newline separated).

SMTP (required for forms)

Forms:

• POST /contact
• POST /leave-reply

SMTP env vars are documented in SMTP_SETUP.md. The important ones are:

• SMTP_HOST, SMTP_PORT
• SMTP_USER, SMTP_PASSWORD
• SMTP_FROM, SMTP_TO (defaults to SMTP_USER)
• SMTP_USE_SSL (default: 1) / SMTP_USE_TLS (default: 0)

Project layout

• __init__.py — creates the Flask app and loads .env in dev
• app.py — dev entrypoint (app.run(...))
• homeViews.py — routes, validation, CSV persistence, SMTP send
• wsgi.py — production WSGI entrypoint (application)
• templates/ — Jinja templates (pages + partials)
• static/ — CSS/JS/images/fonts + portfolio archives under static/portfolio/

Routes & behavior

Home

• GET / renders templates/home/index.html

Projects

• GET /projects/<project_slug>

Resolution order:

1. If static/portfolio/<project_slug>/index.html exists, the app redirects to that static file.
2. Otherwise, if the slug is a known hosted project (see the hosted = {...} map in homeViews.py), it redirects to the corresponding *.fcjamison.com URL.
3. Otherwise it redirects to https://github.com/<GITHUB_ORG>/<project_slug> (default GITHUB_ORG=FrankJamison).

Contact / Leave Reply

• Both endpoints persist submissions to data/*.csv and attempt to send a notification email.
• Both endpoints include a simple honeypot field (hp) for bot reduction.

Production

• Install production deps from requirements-prod.txt.
• Prefer running behind a reverse proxy (Nginx/Apache) with a real WSGI server (Gunicorn/etc).
• This repo includes a Linux-oriented walkthrough in PRODUCTION_SETUP.md.

Example (Gunicorn):

gunicorn --workers 2 --bind 127.0.0.1:8000 wsgi:application

Note: /contact and /leave-reply write CSV files under data/, so ensure the process user can write to that directory in production.

Troubleshooting

• Forms return { ok: false }: SMTP env vars are missing or failing; see SMTP_SETUP.md and check server logs.
• TLS/cert errors locally: some antivirus tools intercept SMTP TLS; SMTP_ALLOW_INVALID_CERT=1 is available for dev only.

Accessibility / WCAG

This project is intended to be WCAG-aligned (target: WCAG 2.2 AA). For a repeatable checklist (automated + manual verification), see ACCESSIBILITY.md.

Quick regression check:

python3 tools/a11y_sanity_check.py