Blog

Off-Site Services is an award-winning web development and consulting firm providing strategic services to our partners

2018 WP plugins recommendations

Jan 11th, 2018 by Max Tokman

Here's our pick of WP plugins, recommended for use in 2018

Caldera Form is a free and powerful plugin that creates responsive forms with a simple drag and drop editor that makes it easy to create forms for WordPress.  The plug-in  includes conditional logic, anti-spam, notification emails, and database entry tracking

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How we got our web site a 100% score in Google’s PageSpeed Insights - and why you shouldn’t

Jan 11th, 2018 by Max Tokman

PageSpeed Insights is an analysis and guidance tool for improving web site’s UX. As with other Google web tools, its aim is to encourage web site optimization for faster SEO crawl and indexing, which obviously translates into huge operations cost savings for Google.
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Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) accessibility requirements for web sites

Jun 29th, 2017 by Max Tokman

Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) accessibility requirements for web sites were supposed to take effect in 2018, but thanks to a recent Florida ruling covered in our earlier post they are now for all intents and purposes in effect.
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Florida court imposes ADA requirement on Winn-Dixie's retail web site

Jun 29th, 2017 by Max Tokman

ADA requirements for consumer-facing websites are supposed to go into effect in 2018, but some are starting early.  Winn-Dixie built their website in 2015 and has now earmarked quarter of a million dollars to make it ADA compliant, based on recent court ruling.

Link - https://www.courthousenews.com/judge-holds-winn-dixie-supermarkets-website-violates-ada/

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[Few] shades of outsourcing or how to spot fraud before it ruins your day

Jun 6th, 2017 by Max Tokman

Same as anyone remotely involved with IT, I get bombarded with unending streams of daily emails, calls, and feeds promising superior offshoring, nearshoring and all other kinds of remote technical help for fraction of what it should cost.  Being a polite person, I occasionally respond to these sales pitches and over the years have come to gauge fairly well the background of these companies just from the way their sales pitch is crafted.

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Color Check tool for validating ADA readability compliance

May 31st, 2017 by Max Tokman

Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is slated to become a legal requirement for websites selling goods or services directly to the public starting in 2018.  There are already plenty of good resources for identifying code-based compliance, but image compliance is a trickier matter.  As a quick solution, we put together a Color Check tool that in two clicks allows you to select foreground and background colors and performs contrast validation on selected colors in accordance with ADA requirements.

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Automated website testing in Firefox with Selenium IDE plugin

Mar 29th, 2016 by Max Tokman

Introduction

User experience testing is a crucial element of web quality assurance.   One UX testing solution we use internally is a Selenium IDE plugin for Firefox, which allows you to record interactions with multiple elements and multiple web pages, organize recorded tests into sets (suites) and save them for future use.  Below is a screenshot showing Selenium IDE popup that appears in Firefox after plugin is installed and activated, with test cases organized on the left, playback and recording controls on the top, actions being recorded in the main content area on the left and

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Testing website's new server with URL prior to launch / transfer - on Mac and PC

Mar 24th, 2016 by Max Tokman

This instruction will be useful for anyone who has to test new website being build, or website being transferred to new server, prior to DNS change when all you have is a new website's IP address.  You can make changes on your local machine to associate web address (URL) with known IP address and test how the website performs when called via that URL.  Once local settings are changed, the website is ready to be tested in web browser on your local machine with its actual URL.

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The magic manhour

Mar 11th, 2016 by Max Tokman

blog entry image

— With sufficient resources in place, we can now shorten the "baby" timeline to 1 month!

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Harness-B now with auto suggest between work category / technology / operator

Mar 10th, 2016 by Max Tokman

Once your Harness-B accumulates enough historical data on projects and operator performance, you can start using auto suggest between category, technology and operator. Simply select work category for new task and both technology and operator fields will get automatically populated based on historic data specific to this work category and project.
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