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99 Francs ran a round of improvements on the live WordPress site for Trivelle Gardens, a townhouse development in Hobsonville, Auckland, New Zealand. Along the way we found that the enquiry form was silently rejecting every submission — then fixed it, diagnosed where the emails were going, and moved the content the client changes most often into fields they control themselves.
Trivelle Gardens was already built and selling when we picked it up. The work covered listing agents, open home dates, a hero that supports image or video, a thank-you page, and the two problems nobody had put in the brief — enquiries that never arrived, and emails that landed in quarantine.
A property development website has one job between an ad and a viewing: carry the enquiry. On this site the form returned a validation error to every visitor and delivered nothing to the agents — and the emails that did get sent were being held in the agency’s mail quarantine. Neither problem was in the brief, because neither was visible from the outside.
The brief was a list of content changes. Testing the enquiry form was routine diligence — and it turned out every submission was being rejected. For a development still selling homes, that is lost buyers, not a bug report.
Emails were landing in quarantine at the agency's Microsoft 365. Instead of the usual "set up SPF", we checked the actual DNS and named what was missing: no SPF, no DMARC, no MX record, with a correct Return-Path already in place.
"The form is slow" became a breakdown: about a third of a second on the site, roughly nine tenths of a second in the email API. That changed the fix from optimisation to interface feedback.
The client noticed a pause after pressing Submit. Rather than guessing at a cause, we split the request into parts and timed each one. The site was never the slow bit.
WordPress, Contact Form 7 and validation, no email sent
347 / 322 / 370 ms across three runs
~345 ms
The Postmark API call on its own
848 ms and 919 ms across two runs
~880 ms
A full successful submission, end to end
1,291 ms to 2,320 ms across runs
1.3–2.3 s
Agents, viewing dates and the hero media are ordinary admin fields, built with ACF and shortcodes in a child theme. Nothing here needs a developer, and nothing needs tidying up by hand.
The other options stay saved, so switching back costs nothing. The site’s curved hero shape is applied by a mask built from the alpha channel of the original artwork, which means a video takes exactly the same silhouette as the photograph — and an ordinary rectangular image can be uploaded with nothing cut out by hand.
The block sorts upcoming viewings by date, drops past sessions on its own and hides itself entirely when none are left. There is also a single switch to hide it regardless — useful between release stages. The client fills in dates; nobody has to remember to remove them.
Enquiries now go to both listing agents with the project manager in blind copy, and Reply-To is set from the visitor’s own address, so replying takes one click. The submit button switches to a sending state and locks — which doubles as protection against double submissions — and a dedicated thank-you page replaces a confirmation message that only flickered before the redirect. Error messages stayed exactly where they were.
Inheriting a live site means the first risk is your own changes. So every edit is recorded with a way back, every new block is agreed as a mockup first, and every result is verified rather than assumed.
Every code, settings and content change was written down as before-and-after with revert steps, alongside a running work log of why each decision was made.
Each new block shipped first as a self-contained HTML mockup with two or three options. The client picked one, and only then did it go into the site.
Agents, viewing dates and the hero media became ACF fields and shortcodes in the child theme, so keeping the site current never waits on a developer.
A success toast proves nothing. Every change was confirmed by reloading the page and re-reading the stored values, and theme files by requesting the file itself.
Every number below was measured on the live site, before and after, rather than estimated. The one outstanding item — three missing DNS records at the domain registrar — was handed to the client with exactly what to add and why.
100%
An anti-spam component rejected every single submission. Visitors saw a validation error, the agents saw nothing at all. Found during a routine check, not through a complaint — and fixed.
−75%
The homepage hero went from 6.6 MB to 1.66 MB with a like-for-like quality check, and the original stayed in the media library.
345 ms
The rest of the delay after Submit sits in the external email API. So the fix was honest interface feedback, not optimising a bottleneck that was never there.
Communication was clear and responsive throughout the process, and our feedback was always handled with great flexibility. His work is strong, and the final result was exactly what we were looking for.
“When we were looking for help with the Trivelle Gardens website update, we were referred to Alexander by a business partner who had worked with him before and spoke highly of his work. Our experience working with Alexander has been just as positive. We’re very happy with how the website turned out and would happily recommend his work.”
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Yes. Listing agents, upcoming open home dates and the hero media all live in admin fields built with ACF and shortcodes in a child theme — the same approach we take to WordPress support for real estate clients. Past viewing sessions drop off on their own and the block hides itself when none are left.
