How to organize test automation from scratch?

Question

css

Good day!
Need advice, or better yet, a lot of advice, from people involved in web application test automation.
The essence of the problem: there is a company that provides its customers with convenient access to data aggregated from various sources and databases. There is a development team, support, system administrators, database administrators .... BUT there are no testers. Everyone is involved in testing, no matter how strange it may sound.
And here, my dear Frodo, comes the idea of ​​test automation. Question: how to competently organize this automation if:
1) there are no test cases, as such. Testing has always been carried out according to the principle: there is a functional that is abstractly sorted by significance, and we check it.
2) there is no documentation. Maximum: short notes of programmers on new features and fixes in each new build. 3) there is Jira
, which serves as a bug tracker
4) there is no full-fledged test version of the product: there is a battle and test builds (code), but the database is all 1
add to make it clear what needs to be automated at all. For this adapted TestLink. And I started adding positive tests there (because there is a 4th point), after ~ 50% of test cases were ready, I started automating in parallel. Also, now the issue of deploying a full-fledged test environment with a test database is being discussed with programmers to obtain the expected results, and not fortune-telling.
And here (although this should have been asked before), the question arose whether I chose the right approach? And how would it cost/is it worth building the process in general?
Interested primarily in real examples, or materials that can be used as a basis.
Thank you very much in advance.

Answer 1

And what prevents you from placing navigation, logo, etc. inside a diva with a gradient background?

<header>
  <div class="bg_header">
    <nav>
      <ul>
         <li><a href="#">Пункт1</a></li>
         <li><a href="#">Пункт2</a></li>
         <li><a href="#">Пункт3</a></li>
         <li><a href="#">Пункт4</a></li>
         <li><a href="#">Пункт5</a></li>
       </ul>
     </nav>
  </div>
</header>

header - set the background with a picture
.bg_header - set the background gradient and don't forget to set the height to the full header.
nav - stays on top of both the picture and the background.
Something like this: codepen.io/anon/pen/bwNmvr

Answer 2

Quotes of great people:
If you have a mess on the project and you decide to automate, then you will have an automated mess.
After reading the description of your project, I came to the following conclusions.
And you decide to automate to save resources, not to improve the quality of the product.
I offer you the following:

1. Stop treating testing as a misunderstanding.
   
2. Hire a smart QA and listen to him.
   

Answer 3

start with Jenkings + Jira integration
, then you will understand what to do