Testing is in a strange state right now. Both large corporations and small start-ups absolutely require testers. The problem is what kind of tester.

If you fall into the trap of thinking that anybody can be a tester, you’ll see the impact in your choices. Similar outcomes would occur if you had the same thoughts about developers. You wouldn’t hire a developer without any experience, why would you do the same for a tester? (The exception to the rule are fresh upstarts who are looking to get their feet wet in the programming world.) Testing is not trivial and should not be treated as such. In this day and age, testers need to know how to program.

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I spent time yesterday with Kohsuke Kawaguchi (@kohsukekawa) and many other Jenkins CI enthusiasts in NYC, discussing the state of Jenkins and observing how different teams are utilizing the tool. For those not in the know, Jenkins is a continuous integration software that allows you to handle build deployments and run tests against them. Seeing the other dev shops and the way they use Jenkins to the extent they do, it really still blows my mind. It almost feels like magic. I wanted to share a few gems of knowledge that I gleaned throughout the day.

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Among IT professionals and software developers, the debate over the merits of working on site has raged since the dawn of time. The Behance team has always advocated that being on site is the best way to build up a finely tuned team. Building great products requires constant collaboration, balancing of opinions, and being able to work with the girl with the right set of skills to solve your problem.

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I lost count of how many times I’ve been followed by an SEO/SEM expert, consultant, or programmer on Twitter. All these people claiming to be experts on something anyone can learn to do from a single-page leaflet. Because really, if everyone is claiming to be an expert in something, are there any experts at all?

If I had just one piece of SEO advice to give, it would be to stop paying for SEO advice. You can find it ALL online! Here are probably the most common ones you will read about:

• Domain Name
  If you own “foobar.com” you can make a great bet you’ll be on the first page when someone searches “foobar”
• URL Structure
  If you’re not lucky enough to own “foobar.com”, or any variation thereof, make sure your URLs segments can throw it in. “somethingelse.com/foobar” is better than nothing. Search “Typography” in Google and take a look.
• Title
  In today’s multi-tabbed browsers it becomes harder and harder for users to read your full title. Search engines don’t have that problem so don’t forget to make each page title relevant to that page.
• META tags
  Your description and keywords should be as relevant and unique as possible on each page. Yes I know Google doesn’t care about keywords anymore, but there are still other search engines.
• Linkbacks
  Having other sites link to your site is key. If you want people finding you for “foobar” you want people linking to you with “foobar” being the text. Even if people link back with different text, it will at least increase your PageRank.

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Testing is hard. Maintaining tests is even harder.

When we first started using Selenium WebDriver, writing a test meant creating a one-off function that performed the given task, but duplicated a bunch of code, and used hard-coded elements if any HTML/CSS got involved. Trying to get coverage on something as large as the Behance Network (be.net) became bloated and unmaintainable.

Without an easy way to create and improve tests as features changed, QA + testing became the last priority in development.

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On Wednesday, April 4 we launched 17 websites all at once. They were our 17 Served sites, which included 12 previously existing ones and 5 brand new ones, all with a fresh new makeover. Development was completed two days prior to launch, and started five days prior to that, with a team of only three front-end developers.

Five days to build 17 websites?! You heard right! With heavy utilization of some advanced Sass’ techniques, we built 17 websites in 5 days, a feat we almost definitely could not have accomplished without the power of Sass variables, partials, logic and imports.

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The new Behance features a multitude of new ways to explore and discover creative work. But what about the code that powers everything you see and interact with? What’s making everything look so good and feel so smooth?

A big part of the answer is CSS. There have been a lot of advancements in web development recently, not only in terms of the HTML5 and CSS specs but also in the multitude of tools that have been created to assist in CSS development. We can build cooler websites in less time, and the rapid release schedules of popular browsers like Firefox and Chrome mean that web developers can deliver more awesome faster than ever before.

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This post is part of a series where Behance developers talk about the various tools they use to get things done and make ideas happen.

1. Who are you and what do you do at Behance?

Greetings all! I’m Alex Lee and I joined the team at Behance to do crazy JavaScript for our various web apps. Before I joined, only Dave Stein was doing the heavy JavaScripting. That at least partially contributes to his creeping madness. Since day 1 of working here, I have been charting the great tumultuous seas of JavaScript, building the new Action Method Online, which I can assure everybody is at least 17 times better than the current one.

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This post is part of a series where Behance developers talk about the various tools they use to get things done and make ideas happen.

1. Who are you, and what do you do at Behance?

Oh hey! My name is Jessica Nicole Lissy, but most people call me Jess. I’m a professional mouse clicker, code stalker, Apple lover, and style enthusiast. I’m originally from New Jersey, but I spent most of my life in Charleston, South Carolina and Orlando, Florida. I’ve also lived in California, Arizona, and Colorado. I like to surf, wakeboard, snowboard, and sport the latest kicks.

Basically what I do at Behance is CSS the “bleep” out of Behance’s Custom Creative Networks (such as Student Show, among others), and all of our Served sites.
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The Stop Online Piracy Act, better known as SOPA, is a bill that grants power to the federal government and copyright holders to take actions against sites that promote copyright infringement. The problem with the bill is its murky definition of what makes a site in violation. A site is in violation of the act if it  operates with the “object of promoting, or has promoted, its use to carry out acts that constitute a violation” of copyright. Unfortunately, this includes any site that allows users to post text, images, audio or videos. There is no additional process for determining if a site actually infringes on this criteria.

At Behance, we take copyright very seriously. As an online platform for Creative Professionals, one of our goals is to help you get the exposure you deserve while at the same time protecting your work with copyright settings. Currently, we allow an assortment of copyright options via Creative Commons licensing, which is what most major photo-sharing sites use. We believe this affords a great balance of protecting your work and allowing it to get the exposure it deserves.

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