20210721 The main summer holiday season here in Finland is July. Tried to keep part of the days as a vacation during July, but I noticed a better model for me this summer is to have some work daily due to ROXEC website development & several SW Consulting & Recruiting cases.

20210722 Building of the new ROXEC website continues with a short STORY & TESTIMONIALS.

By the way, my current role as a Junior Website Builder could be a pretty good additional role for many of us that are willing to share more about their companies and/or themselves. Anyway, building your own website gives learning opportunities & feelings of success.

20210723 Adding more TESTIMONIALS. Very pleasant to read the testimonials giving more self-confidence that ROXEC is already pretty good in what it is doing. Anyway, in the STORY section mentioned Continuous Development (Personal & Business Development) is on the agenda every day.

20210726 Interviewed interesting new Developers & discussed with potential new Partners. Hopefully, we’ll get matches!

One Client got a well-matched Candidate whose process continues early next week after the Client is back from his summer vacation.

Layout of the home page is getting ready. Changed the STORY to the STORIES section to split “the long” story to more readable short stories.

First time came on WordPress Elementor “Server Error (500 error).” (“Error 500”) when UPDATE button was pressed to save changes on the Home page. The problem could not be activated on the other pages. Quite peculiar that even the content of the Home page was copied to other pages, the other pages the UPDATE still worked fine on those pages. Also, amazing that even content of the Home page was minimised the problem existed. Unfortunately, my WordPress & HubSpot Supplier could not solve the problem, but my hosting Supplier solved the problem by increasing a few memory limits. I raised a question: Could the Error 500 be something other than a memory settings problem? Anyhow, I could continue the website development thanks to my Hosting Supplier quick actions & the fix!

20210727 Building of the new ROXEC website continues. Today focused on Contact Forms, Calendar booking, and ROXEC Bot. A few Calendar & Bot integration challenges need to be solved.

The Error 500 came again just on the Home page. My Hosting Supplier again quickly  solved the problem by increasing a few memory limits. It already became quite obvious that the Error 500 is not a pure memory settings problem. Anyhow, I could continue the website development thanks again to my Hosting Supplier!

20210728 The selection of WordPress Elementor & HubSpot (“WPE & HS”) as the main key components for the new ROXEC website seems to be a pretty good fit. They offer the required integrations & by them are quite easy to use to add new functionality & content.

Today was a meeting with WPE & HS Specialists to clarify some new issues. I got very good advice. The coaching is to be continued on a demand basis.

20210729 Adding more content to the new ROXEC website continues. Every now & then you must decide about the extent & approach of each text you are adding to the website.

Discussed more with the potential new Partners. Hopefully, we’ll get matches!

Once again, the Error 500 came again just on the Home page. My WordPress & HubSpot Supplier created a new Home page, now named as Homepage. It solved the problem, but I doubt not the root cause. Anyway, thanks to my WordPress & HubSpot Supplier Supplier, so again I could continue “my work”! All in all, the Error 500 was most probably not related to the hosting services but caused by WordPress settings and/or integration. To avoid the same Error 500, my Hosting Supplier again increased a few memory limits.

20210730 Adding more content to the new ROXEC website continued. A funny HubSpot integration issue, which is under investigation. Sorry, Velisarios whose Calendar booking popped up on my site instead of my own.

New Business Development discussions & planning.

All in all, quite versatile tasks today. That’s one of the best parts of working in a small company.

20210802 Many of the Entrepreneurs work during weekends a bit. Everybody also needs some rest. How much? I suppose youself know best.

Back to the office after “a weekend holiday” that contained just about 5 hours of work.

Someone has said that invoicing is the most important task in a company. Agree?

During the weekend month changed, so yesterday & today was the invoicing time.

Adding more content to the new ROXEC website continued.

20210805 The plan was to publish the new ROXEC website today for my Daughter Milla’s birthday.

Milla has been a great help to review the texts shown on the ROXEC website & other media. Big Hugs & Congratulations Milla ❤️

Unfortunately, my WordPress & HubSpot Supplier with HubSpot could not yet solve open WordPress & HubSpot integration (Calendar Meet & Bot) malfunctions.

20210807-08 Due to challenges with the HubSpot integration, I used the time for finding better pictures & fine-tuning texts.

A new ROXEC logo with a lighter red (code #D40D12 vs old logo’s #94090D) introduced.

20210810 Today I woke up quite early still facing the same challenges with the HubSpot integration (Calendar Meet, Bot).

Based on my 6-year coding experience I started to study the Calendar integration problem. I found “the bug” after about 10 minutes of investigation. Lessons Learnt – Good to refresh & modernise your old-fashioned Skills every now & then.

Now everyone can make a reservation to Veli’s calendar.

Anyhow, now finally was the momentum to publish the new ROXEC website.

Still struggled with the Bot integration problem, but I solved it “by accident” switching from exploratory approach to systematic approach. Lessons Learnt – Be creative to find the best ways to achieve results. Read thoroughly step by step instructions if the most obvious “test cases” don’t help to solve the problem. Sometimes to get results (finally) it is better to switch from exploratory approach to systematic approach.

20210811 Yesterday the new website progressed very well, so the Website Junior Developer got nice feelings about achieving one Big Milestone – It’s live!

After the publication several fine-tuning issues were done for Calendar Meet & Bot & Contact Form because in HubSpot’s own development environment some issues are shown differently.

20210812 Still continued fine-tuning Calendar Meet & Bot & Contact Form. Surprising how many revisions you do need to run before you can be fully satisfied with the outcome. Website development from scratch is not an easy task for a Junior!

Not just the ROXEC website development but also ROXEC Services. Here just an example: A call with a Client that had an urgent new need for a Chief Engineer. Veli found a Qualified Candidate in 3 hours. Hopefully the Client & Candidate find a Match!

20210813 It seemed we were almost ready with the ROXEC website 1.0, i.e., the necessary fine-tuning for Calendar Meet & Bot & Contact Form plus alignments & fonts & colours of each element were almost completed.

But unfortunately, again came the Error 500 when UPDATE button was pressed on the Home page. Was this due to Friday 13^th?? Once again, the same problem was not on the other pages. You may also guess that again my Hosting Supplier quickly solved the problem by increasing memory limits. The right guess! Finally, we really knew that my original concern about “something else than memory problem” is the right answer, so my WordPress & HubSpot Supplier started to find the root cause.

20210814 Still worked with alignments & fonts & colours of each element after layouts of the pages were fixed. Big Thanks to my Website Supplier for the very good session that was very good hands-on training for the future purposes too.

It was a huge work to review 10+ pages to modify that they are responsive for all the three platforms (Desktop & Mobile & Tablet). Have you done that before?

Lessons Learnt – The very same basic principles are useful or almost must in WordPress Website development as in SW development in general, e.g., use global settings / variables, allocate memory etc., so you can make ready at once.

 20210815 Yesterday I got good tips to optimise pictures to increase Visitor Experience (speed-up loading of the pages) & to increase website’s “web-visibility”. Now the photos are optimised for their sizes.

You might guess that I still worked with alignments & fonts & colours. Yeap! Yesterday we knew that the website contained still a few alignment flaws that need to be solved soon.

All known flaws & bugs including for instance 1) Homepage 3 buttons 2) Call – Email button pair 3) Footer were fixed. Now is the time to start hunting new ones!

Lessons Learnt – Quite often just developers find the flaws / bugs but not the visitors, so some of the existing flaws are not so dramatic but anyway I felt they need to be fixed.

20210816 Testing of the ROXEC website continued. Still found a few new bugs related to links, e.g., www.roxec.com vs https://www.roxec.com has a significant difference nowadays. Do you know what is the difference & how can you notice it on a website?

Lessons Learnt – Testing is needed but most of the unnecessary work & re-work can be avoided by doing the right things right at the right time & working carefully at each step before releasing to others or rushing to next phases.

Still a bit of effort with alignments, paddings, margins.

Bug hunting continues!

20210817 A quick first studies to Google Analytics (“GA”). Amazing how much data Google gathers from website visitors. GA is to be investigated more later.

20210818 Still found a flaw on the settings of the used carousels and red buttons below them. Did you notice the same mistake? Not so easy but alignments of the carousels were 3 pixels too on the right. Lessons Learnt – On website development extra carefulness is needed before using elements on other pages. To avoid extra work, try to make global widgets of them.

20210819 The ROXEC home page https://www.roxec.com was optimized. The performance of the page was analysed by PageSpeed. The optimization made a huge leap in mobile scores from 15 to 93 but the page got broken, e.g., HubSpot Contact Form disappeared & attributes of the carousels changed. Lessons Learnt – Performance should be tested all the way during the development Actually the performance should be already on layout planning & design phases one of the key parameters because website performance plays a critical role in Visitor Experience.

20210820 The release before the optimization was restored. I guess, now we perhaps need to re-design the home page.

Made a punch of tests using Google translated Finnish texts. Based on the test results I need to change the configuration of 3 buttons on the top of the home page.

Also found that the boxes under SERVICES don’t like about long Finnish words like “OHJELMISTOKONSULTOINTI” (“SOFTWARE CONSULTING”). How to solve this? Lessons Learnt – At some point you need to decide whether you support several languages or just one despite of flaws that translators may cause. The ROXEC website is & most probably will be in English only because ROXEC Business is global, so with very limited resources the decision was obvious. Also, ROXEC Candidates must have good English Skills & ROXEC Clients most probably have good English Skills to read the selected easy ROXEC English style.

20210821 Saturday, so actually not working but testing the performance problem.

PageSpeed analysed that recaptcha & HubSpot integrations (Calendar Meet & Contact Form) caused the biggest performance drop downs.

All in all, I still need to investigate how to optimize all the pages without breaking the pages. That’s a challenge for a Website Junior Developer! Lessons Learnt – You might have heard everyone who “can use a drawing application” can make a website. That’s pretty much the truth nowadays due to advanced website development environments like WordPress Elementor. But the moment of truth comes when you need to make a modern well-performing optimized website supporting all platforms (mobile, tablet, desktop or even several languages) for business usage. That’s the job for a Website Senior Developer, not for a Junior .

Still Saturday, so not actually working but testing with one of my friends by his tablet how the ROXEC website was acting & shown by a live tablet. Unfortunately, even he as a non-technical person still found a few flaws with alignments & font sizes. Lessons Learnt –While developing a website you must test all the time on your development plus live environments in all the different modes, i.e., mobile & tablet & desktop with different screen sizes to avoid unnecessary re-work.

20210822 Sunday, so again actually not working but testing the performance problem.

Again, analysed with PageSpeed the biggest performance drop downs.

Fortunately, Brother Bot did not cause any extra harms from performance point of view, so he can continue his duties 24/7 on all the pages 😊

Below are a few test results 1) With 2) Without integrations recaptcha & HubSpot integrations (Calendar Meet & Contact Form). As expected, performance of the pages increased a lot without the integrations but noticed also that the results varied a lot especially in mobile. Why the variation?

The results on Homepage.

• on mobile 1) 18 – 21. 2) 38 – 64.
• on desktop 1) 38 – 43. 2) 85 – 95.

The results on the “Contact Us” page.

• on mobile 1) 25 – 42. 2) 50 – 66.
• on desktop 1) 54 – 67. 2) 95 – 99.
• Google Maps slows down a bit more.

The results on the other pages.

• on mobile 1) 30 – 40. 2) 55 – 70.
• on desktop 1) 60 – 75. 2) 94 – 99.

Based on the analysed results recaptcha & HubSpot integrations (Calendar Meet & Contact Form).removed from all the pages expect “Contact Us” page at least until they can be optimized without breaking the pages.

Made just an easy fix for the long Finnish word “OHJELMISTOKONSULTOINTI” by changing “SOFTWARE CONSULTING” to “SW CONSULTING”. Fair enough?

20210823 The optimization & the restore of the older version caused change of settings of several elements, so again some rework but it was a pretty quick operation because the needed parameters were known & well-tested before “the accident”.

A few unnecessary plugins & templates were removed & fine-tuned still some alignments, e.g., on the Homepage settings of the boxes below SERVICES title were too tricky for a Junior Developer, so I need to ask help from a Senior Developer who solved it quickly.

Still need to test on a live tablet to ensure the new website.

Carried out again the same test cases as yesterday on Homepage.

• on mobile 1) 18 – 21. 2) 39 – 55.
• on desktop 1) 38 – 43. 2) 89 – 95.

The results on the “Contact Us” page.

• on mobile 1) 24 – 36. 2) 47 – 52.
• on desktop 1) 56 – 73. 2) 95 – 98.

20210824 Still fixed the unexpected changes of the optimization & the restore of the older version. The site still requires more testing including testing on a live tablet. What a rework!

Performance improvements were on the task list as well. These are to be continued aiming to get back the HubSpot integrations on Homepage.

20210825 Decided to leave the performance optimization for future action list because it’s totally a new world for a Junior & importance of the performance for the ROXEC website is not so crucial.

Got a good lesson by WordPress & HubSpot Supplier about SEO essentials, so SEO metadata & titles are on the weekend’s action list.

The current results analyzed by PageSpeed on the “Contact Us” page including the HubSpot integrations.

• on mobile 36 – 44.
• on desktop 63 – 72.

20210826-27 Still correcting a bit the broken layout & at the same time improving some of the content.

This week focus has been on Talent Scout & Trusted Broker activities even though I have not blogged about them so much. Anyway, a lot of actions in the SW Consulting & Recruiting fields even during the whole summer period. The coming autumn seems to be hectic as well.

Due to increasing demand of SW everywhere have encouraged new players to enter this business during 2021.

20210828-29 Weekend so not actually working, so quite many working days in a row! That’s pretty normal for Solopreneurs / Entrepreneurs. Lessons Learnt: More freedom to work whenever & wherever more profitably & happier we work.

20210830 – 20210903 Got 2 new Clients that have several assignments, so we need to work hard to find well-matched Candidates. It seems we already found the first ones. Unfortunately for some of the assignments we could not offer any suitable Candidate mostly due to salary & availability miss-matches.

During this week we worked with several Clients & many Candidates meaning a huge amount of communication. Matching is a hectic job!

About Metrics: ROXEC with its new Clients have been able to shorten Contact-to-Quote &  Contact-to-Client plus other Metrics compared to the past. This is an interesting finding. Perhaps the market is very hot or ROXEC has improved in finding the most potential Clients. Both options might be possible, we’ll see. Lessons Learnt – Even very basic & ad-hoc Metrics can reveal something very important, so spend at least a short time every now & then gathering Metrics Data & analyzing Metrics. It most probably pays back!

20210904-05 Weekend, so I tried to relax. Just about 5 hours of working.

20210906 The day started badly; laptop Wi-Fi connection didn’t work as it was working on Friday. I tried very basic Wi-Fi switch off/on & laptop power off/on but those easy tricks didn’t solve the problem, so an agile & quick external help was needed.

• Just Google Maps “computer service” showed several suitable service providers, but most of them were not open at 8:30 a.m.
• Selected at first 2 previously unknown Solopreneurs to support small companies like ROXEC. A small Service Provider really must be a pretty good one if the company is alive for years.
• The Service Provider #1 didn’t answer.
• The Service Provider #2 was focusing on Linux, not on Windows operating systems.
• So, I started to investigate deeply the problem using some of the Skills needed already during 1990’s while debugging my own & others’ Software bugs. Once again, the old-time SW Senior Developer was alive!
• Already the next step: “Network Adapter analytics” \ “Network adapter Wi-Fi driver information” indicated something wrong could be on file C:\WINDOWS\INF\oem51.inf. The file is a part of the “Realtek 8822BE Wireless LAN 802.11ac PCI-E NIC” network adapter that was in use in my laptop.
• The Service Provider #1 called back. A short discussion about the problem. He said he is busy just but could help during the afternoon. He gave quick advice that I didn’t follow. Instead of his advice I found a better solution that worked. I also found that The Service Provider #1’s advice could not have solved the problem. Wanna hear my solution?
• Lessons Learnt – As a Solopreneur be prepared to develop all possible Skills needed to run your business. I know, I could have done something else before getting help, but it doesn’t help if you need to work even during weekends but “HelpDesk” is not available during the same period.

20210907-24 What a hectic month has been, the market is hot just now.

On the completed task list is for instance new Clients & Candidates & Partners plus diversified Business Development items & Agreements. During this time occurred also a couple disappointments that’s quite normal in business & life in general. Lessons Learnt – It seems that most of the social media postings are mainly about success stories, but the truth is not always so nice & clean. I’ll tell more about real life cases later I have heard or faced.

20210921 Alihankinta fair at Tampere was a very good place to change working methods from full-remote to face-to-face chats by meeting a lot of new potential Clients & Candidates & Partners plus many of the already known ones.

20210925-20211202 Still very hectic days & weeks & months! So much to write but not the right time for it just now.

I have a dream to make “an online book” or something larger at some point. Do you know a good copy writer Talent or are you a skilled writer who easily understands & write about life & work life on all levels? If so, let’s chat!

20211203 Outside early winter here in Finland, so we published HOT JOBS. It’s worth visiting frequently. https://www.roxec.com/hot-jobs

20211204-20230831 A lot of Ups & Downs in ROXEC Business have occurred during this period of time. The Market has been slowing down since late 2022, so ROXEC has gone through several Business Development rounds.

20230901 Now is the time to solve growing cybersecurity challenges.

The below estimated cybercrime numbers in 2022 are predicted to worsen rapidly

• Cybercrime damages 7 trillion (7 000 000 000 000) USD globally.
• 90% of organisations will be breached every 12 months.
• Plus, lost shareholder value, reputational damages, ransomware, data theft, espionage etc. damages
• In general, cybersecurity is seen as complicated & way too technical.
• Sources: Cybersecurity Ventures, FBI, PwC

The Good News – Zafehouse & Zafepass

• Zafehouze is one of the global leaders in secure privileged access.
• Zafehouze’s Zafepass is an Access & Connectivity & Identity Control Platform.
• Zafepass enables safe access to any system (IT, OT, IoT, IIoT) for E2E encrypted data.
• In addition to many other benefits, Zafepass is easy-to-use & cost-efficient.
• ROXEC takes care of Zafehouze Sales & Support in Finland.
• More info: https://www.roxec.com/cyber-security

P.S. ROXEC still provides Headhunting / Executive Search services, so contact me if you need a well-matched Talent or Job.

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