Can the client update the website without a developer?

Yes. Listing agents, upcoming open home dates and the hero media all live in admin fields. Past viewing sessions drop off on their own and the block hides itself when none are left, so nothing has to be cleaned up by hand.

Case study · Website support

Client: Trivelle Gardens
Industry: Real estate
Service: WordPress support services

Services: Website supportWeb development
Focus: WordPressACFContact Form 7Hobsonville NZ

Trivelle Gardens: The brief was cosmetic. The enquiry form was losing every lead.

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.

Live site→Get your site looked at→

Trivelle Gardens homepage — the hero with its curved mask, the development render behind it and the enquiry button

Direct answer

A round of support on a live WordPress site: a dead enquiry form found and fixed, email delivery diagnosed with facts, and new blocks the client runs without us.

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.

Challenge

Everything looked fine. Nothing was arriving.

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.

We checked the thing nobody asked about

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.

A precise diagnosis beats generic advice

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.

We measured the complaint instead of guessing

"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.

Measurement

“It takes ages to submit” is a feeling. These are the numbers.

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

Built to be edited

Anything that changes weekly lives in a field, not in the code.

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.

Hero media

One switch: photo, video file or a YouTube link.

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.

Open homes

Six date slots that clean up after themselves.

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.

Trivelle Gardens listing agents block — the approved contact card design that sits under the enquiry form, with placeholder contact details

The enquiry path

From a dead form to a lead in both agents’ inboxes.

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.

Process

How we work on a site somebody else built.

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.

Record the current state before touching it

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.

Mock up, approve, then build

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.

Move the content into admin fields

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.

Verify by reloading, not by the green notice

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.

Outcome

Enquiries arrive, the page is lighter, and the delay has a name.

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%

of enquiries were failing

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%

hero image weight

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

of the wait is the site

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.

Trivelle Gardens neighbourhood block — transport, schools, retail and parks around Hobsonville, Auckland

Client

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.”

Wyatt Yang · Unispot, developer of Trivelle Gardens
Auckland, New Zealand

Trivelle Gardens open homes block — the approved list of upcoming viewings as visitors see it

Guides

Questions about the Trivelle Gardens website support project.

Browse case studies→Real estate websites→Discuss your site→

99 Francs ran a round of paid improvements on the live WordPress site for Trivelle Gardens, a townhouse development in Hobsonville, Auckland, New Zealand. The work covered new client-editable content blocks, a repaired enquiry form, a measured diagnosis of email delivery and delay, a thank-you page, and a hero that supports image or video.

During a routine check of the form, not through a client complaint. An anti-spam component was failing its own timing validation and rejecting every submission, so visitors saw an error and the agents received nothing. Once fixed, enquiries reach both listing agents with Reply-To set to the sender, so a reply goes back in one click.

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.

Yes. This project was a round of improvements on a site that was already live and built by another team. The work included auditing the current state, recording every change with revert steps, and shipping each new block as an approved mockup before it went into the site.

Yes. Trivelle Gardens is in Hobsonville, Auckland, and 99 Francs has delivered property and real estate websites for the New Zealand market, including 4 Madeira Place in Grafton and The Pacifica Penthouse in Auckland CBD.