New Server
Michael Muller resume - ColdFusion Web Application Developer
Printer Friendly
Michael Muller, 28 Center Street, Montague, MA 01351, (413) 320-5336, Email
Executive Summary:
Web Community Developer - I have been creating online communities since March 1993 starting with a DOS-based two-line dial-up BBS all the way to large web-based community servers. I code primarily in ColdFusion MX (starting with CF4.5 in 2001) and have Perl and ASP skills as well as extensive HTML, CSS and SQL skills. I am also a frequent user of many javascript and Flash libraries, and am skilled in implementing them to enhance user interfaces. I have launched and maintain several major websites / community portals and continue to develop my own community / corporate / non-profit platform called WebWorks Server (which this and many other sites use). I am also the code author of Zipride.com, a community ride-sharing website.
Content Management Systems - In addition to authoring WebWorks Server, I am the author of WebWorks Lite, a smaller, simpler CMS in use by over 20 customers in its first year, and have written custom CMSs for clients such as Vermont.com, and Zipride.com, the University of Massachsuetts, and have dramatically modified other CMSs such as the e-commerce package SiteDirector (by Quill Design) for Silver Screen Design, an apparel and novelty screen printing company.
Training - Using Hypercam, I produced a training CD on Cold Fusion 5. The codeset used for the training CD was eventually developed into WebWorks Server. Students of the training CD, please go to the VTC Training CD page on this website. In recent years I have frequently used GoTo Meeting Skype to provide live training to clients.
HMI - Developer of interactive LED electronic display systems and HMI (Human Machine Interface) applications for companies such as Citibank, Dreyfus and Foxwoods Casino from 1987 through 1995. I was involved in developing mission-critical multimedia applications for casino clients such as Manitoba Lotteries Corporation in 1997.
MIS professional - 1995 through 2000. Hands on experience in building, rebuilding and maintaining PCs; migrating from a DOS / Lantastic network to a Win95 / Windows NT network; installing and configuring all types of hardware and software; and on-site troubleshooting of problems and communication diagnostics. I have worked in team environments doing large hw/sw installations, as well as many small solo installs. I currently also volunteer as Technical Administrator for the Montague Reporter, a local weekly newspaper.
Documentation - Produced technical and user manuals for various systems I helped to develop, or was involved with. Also produced presentation decks for bank clients. Wrote much of the help system for my own WeWorks Server.
Read my professional / personal narrative -- how I got where I am today.
General Skills:
- Analytical and logical problem solving skills. Capable of picking apart a technical situation and devising creative solutions.
- Internet skills. Complete website authorship, from conception, through domain attainment, server setup, website information architecture, template building, database design, application programming, to client training in back-end system for content management. Can also research application resources available on the web, such as tag and function libraries to minimize coding time, and reviewing best practices and new technologies.
- Leasing a colocated server running ColdFusion MX8 with RDS access. Currently manages three Windows Server 2003 webservers through Enterhost.com
- Webmaster and application programmer, primarily database-driven ColdFusion. Some Perl, ASP and Javascript. Codes by hand in HomeSite+ as preference but will use Dreamweaver if forced to. Some Flash and Action Script skills as well. Excellent CSS skills.
- Database experience: Access, intermediate Oracle (using TOAD) and MS SQL Server.
- Strong knowledge of Windows and Windows Networking.
- Experienced with all MS Office components. Familiar with most Macromedia (now Adobe) products, Corel Draw, Adobe Photoshop, Quark Express, Macromind Director, Quicktime, Graphic Work Shop, Macintosh OS, Windows NT / XP and all things modem and Internet. Experience with multimedia authoring.
- Experience writing technical briefs, user manuals, creating textual copy for and assisting in design and layout of marketing brochures and white papers.
- Created training CD in ColdFusion with Quicktime movies.
- Experience interfacing via network and serial ports with various third party hardware, from video switchers to intelligent door-access control modules, and specifying software interface solutions with documentation. Capable of parsing and translating unfamiliar serial data feeds, and connecting to various networked services and devices. Can "talk" to almost anything, serially.
- PC hardware experience installing IDE/EIDE/VLB/PCI cards, storage devices and any and all other internal/external PC components and connectables. Also strong Windows 95/98/NT/XP experience; both Workstation and Server.
- Field tested PC diagnostic/repair abilities (have my own tool pack). Have done many installations.
- Community organizer. Have run community-based online systems since 1993 with multiple thousands of users over time.
- Graduate of NYC-based Center for the Media Arts in Computer Graphics, Paste-up/Layout Ad Design, and Television Production.
- Also have light carpentry, bike repair, and frisbee skills.
Employment & Project History:
- August 2008 || Developer as Montague WebWorks
Zipride.com - www.Zipride.com
Contracted to create a community-based ridesharing website. Users can create online accounts and post or request rides to share. Users can gain Carma Points and receive ratings and feedback. Auto-creates a map and retrieves local weather. - June 2008 || Developer
Silver Screen Design - www.SilverScreenDesign.com
Took on SSD as a private client to continue developing their website front and backends, and to help launch a new product line called PeaceDayPrints.com using a stock copy of SiteDirector.
Have also taken on the task of SEO and traffic building, as well as sourcing out a "design lab" for her t-shirt customers. - May 2008 || ColdFusion Developer as Montague WebWorks
Vermont.com - Vermont.com
Re-wrote their backend CMS from scratch, and modified front-end to spec. Now developing XML interfaces to offsite feeds, such as SnoCountry.com
Site was previously hosted by Intellistrand using their proprietary "CityState" CMS. - November 2007 || Server / IP Networking Consultant
Meetinghouse Research Group
Contracted as a consultant to assist the move of 45 websites from a web-farm host (positronicdesign.com) to colocated server (viux.com)
Defined steps, set up servers, researched SEO options on new platform - November 2007 - present || Managing Partner
Montague WebWorks - MontagueWebWorks.com
Created new company with Patrick Davis to develop and license new, simpler CMS "WebWorks Lite".
As of October 2007 have created sites for over two dozen customers using the WebWorks Lite platform.
As of April of 2008 also develop and license WebWorks Server (previously NetSite Server).
May - August of 2008 re-wrote backend CMS for Vermont.com and marketing/business plans.
May - September of 2008 created Zipride.com for client. - July 2005 - March 2008 || Associate Partner
REP, LLC
Agreement between Studio3100 and REP (Dave Glover and Bill Levy) to market NetSite Server and sign up network dealers. At the time of the partnership dissolve in March 2008, REP had signed up or provided demos to 150 clients. - June 2005 - March 2008 || Partner
Studio 3100, LLC (no longer exists)
Created new company with Michael Connors of The Inform Group, Northampton, MA, to continue developing the NetSite server software product.
In 2007 took on some major website clients, such as Silver Screen Design to re-design their product website by heavily modifying SiteDirector, an ecommerce website platform.
Partnership dissoved in March of 2008. - October 2004 - present || Vendor / Developer
Springfield Jewish Community Center (JCC) - www.SpringfieldJCC.com
First client to use version 2.0 of "myGroupServer" software (now called WebWorks Server). This paying-beta client helped launch the new code iteration under the new name. Continue to host under Montague WebWorks. - April 2004 - December 2005 || Application Programmer
Green River Data Analysis - (www.GreenRiver.org)
Hired as Cold Fusion Web Developer for major client Building Green (www.BuildingGreen.com).
- Rewrote entire user-login authentication code
- Created online shopping cart from scratch and interfaced with Authorize.net
- Worked with another developer to rewrite "energy calculator"
- Created a simple blog-like web forum from scratch for each project page - August 2003 - present || Application Programmer
The Inform Group - www.theInformGroup.com
Initially hired to create a complete content management tool for client Sumitomo Drive Europe and integrate into provided look-and-feel design by the Inform Group, and then host it on own servers.
www.SumitomoDriveEurope.com (site is now hosted by a company in Germany.)
Continue to work with the Inform Group on various projects. - June 2000 - August 2004 || Web Developer III
Internet Publishing Group, ITS, University of Massachusetts
Hired as Web Developer II and promoted to Web Developer III within nine months.
Migrated static HTML shop through Perl to Cold Fusion database-driven applications.
Designed back-end systems for almost every website, including Project Manager on some projects.
Co-authored "CA/GE" Central Administration / General Editor content management system for multi-site centralized administration. The plan was to be able to build a full database-driven website including dynamic site map, search, nav/subnav and content delivery, from scratch, in less than a week (assuming content is available). 25% of the development time will be in the visual template design, the rest in data entry in generic wysiwyg forms, drop-down menus and checkboxes.
This concept was brought into both WebWorks projects, listed above. - July 1999 - present || President
Muller Technologies
Created MontagueMA.net website using a variety of Perl scripts in 1999. Authored a training CD in 2001 on how to translate a Perl-based website into a ColdFusion-based website, and then developed the resulting codeset into a product called "myGroupServer" which then ran the MontagueMA.net website, and many others. On one such site I teamed up with Barbara Stewart, Librarian at UMass, to create the Franklin County Publications Archive Index, a searchable database of 30,000 newspaper articles from 1870 to 1875 (so far).
I am currently working on version 3.3 of WebWorksServer, previously called NetSite.
I also do individual consulting as an MIS and Web Consultant for SilverScreen Design and Northampton Design. - August 1997 - July 1999 || Networking / Desktop Consultant
MFY Legal Services
Hired as part-time in-house MIS/Consultant (6 days/mo) for this non-profit law firm.
Upgraded network from Lantastic to Window 95/NT Server network.
Installed SLMail server solution for inhouse/external e-mail.
Advised and managed purchase of new hardware and software.
Trained staff in Internet and Windows technology. - April 1995 - April 1998 || Online Consultant & Webmaster
Poets & Writers, Inc.
Managed this literary non-profit organization’s new media development, creating a BBS in 1995.
In July of 1996 installed a 56k DDSII line for a full-time in-house link to the Internet from each workstation on their lan.
Created and helped launch their original website http://www.pw.org in January 1997.
Included site search engine, database searches, guestbook, online catalog, monthly pages of their magazine, and a full scale conferencing system using Motet, a social networking application way ahead of its time. - May 1993 - July 1999 || President
Tree Branch Online Service - http://www.treebranch.com
Started an online service in May of 1993, back when BBSes were king. Treebranch Online Service started to thrive until late 1996 when the web began to explode. Text based BBSes were doomed. In September 1997, upgraded from the old text based TBBS to a web based online service using Mustang (now Santronics) Wildcat Interactive Network Server, an http, telnet, pop3, ftp capable server with integrated message bases and chat/file areas. In July of 1999, the Treebranch Network was sold to Neighborhood Open Space Coalition, a local non-profit organization dedicated to the environmental health of NYC, who runs the website and severalmailing lists to this day.
As of summer 2008 negotiations are underway to bring Treebranch onto the WebWorks Server platform. - August 1987 - June 2001 || Systems Consultant
William Ryan Group
Started as LED sign programmer in 1987, when the company was called the EMC Group. (Some screen shots from the Way Back Machine, circa July 1997.)
Migrated with technology to become graphic programmer for various display devices including large scale WindowsNT-based projection video walls.
Left full time employment in April, 1995, and continued as consultant through 2001.
Assisted development of game interface for Manitoba Lotteries Corporation: specified the runtime application; co-managed the hardware integration; designed the system.ini file; co-designed the output display; wrote the operational and users manuals.
Assisted development of game interfaces for clients Fort McDowell and Foxwoods Casinos for LED signs.
Assisted development of a data translation/delivery server and managed its massive 5-day installation at Foxwoods Casino for their new off track betting "Sports Book" room (making them the largest casino in the world at that point in time). Interfaced Translux LED signs to live track data feed. Connected and configured Syncom’s MultiVision video effects boxes to theater size projection screens and 215 CCC video hub display devices.
Assisted in development of surveillance server application, which has patents pending.
Assisted in patent documentation, white papers and brochures for new server product.
Professional Associations:
- Montague Community Cable, Inc. - Board member
- Montague Grange - Lecturer (Program Director), and Executive Committee
- Montague Town Meeting Member - Precinct 1
- Montague Business Association - Communications Committee
- Montague Historical Society - member
- Hidden-Tech - member
- Valley Dollars - ex-Board Member
- Brooklyn Technical HS - Alumn