Etiquette and leadership training · Nationwide · Inherited live · stabilised

The British School of Excellence

A live course site under hosting strain, stabilised over three weeks without taking it offline, one or two changes at a time with proof before anything was called done.

A school selling courses while its own admin was timing out. The first overnight attempt to fix everything in one push failed: two fixes out of seven, and the admin stopped responding. The method was rebuilt as a loop: scope one action, make it, prove it on the live site, log it. Three weeks later the navigation, the legal page, the missing courses and the links were fixed, and two mistakes of our own were caught by the same loop and owned in writing.

The state we inherited

The admin froze and timed out. Elementor kept forcing Safe Mode. Pages took two to six seconds and a public 503 recurred.
Four navigation widgets stacked in the header, so the mobile menu showed a partial course list.
The privacy policy address redirected to itself. The log had counted 57,765 hits. The page had never existed at that address.
Eleven finished course pages sat unpublished. One was scheduled to appear on the morning its own course began, invisible for its whole selling window.
Two redirect plugins running at once, each holding half the picture. No backup newer than 22 August.
Our own first attempt, 23 to 24 August: everything in one sitting, two verified fixes out of seven, and a 4am note that the method had to change.

The state at handover

One primary navigation, 37 items, the same structure on desktop and mobile. Interior pages carry the same menu.
Every privacy policy address resolves, including the uppercase and legacy ones. The looping rule disabled and kept for audit, not deleted.
Eleven course pages published and back inside their selling window. The Courses menu split into two columns on desktop with no overflow.
Seven homepage buttons repointed to real course pages, every original address recorded before the change. Two Book Now buttons deliberately left alone because they were a working revenue path.
58 addresses swept while logged out. The seven that fail sit in a hidden widget no visitor can reach. Team pages 25 of 25 cards rendering.
A contrast bug we caused, footer links at 1.22:1 for about a week, found by the loop, owned in the log and fixed to 14.51:1. A wrong early audit corrected in the next log rather than quietly replaced.

In numbers

Outages caused by our changes

57,765 hits

Redirect loop disabled

Course pages published

58, none visitor-facing

Links swept logged out

1.22:1 → 14.51:1

Footer link contrast, after our own bug

18.25:1

Dropdown panel contrast

Delivered

Navigation rebuilt and verified on desktop and mobile, 37 items
Eleven finished course pages published and back in the sales window
The redirect loop on the legal page disabled and kept on file, not deleted
Seven homepage buttons repointed to real course pages, every original address recorded first
A contrast bug we introduced ourselves found, owned and fixed
A working method for fragile live sites: one or two changes per step, proof on the live page before it is called done, and a log every session
A plain-English editing guide for the school’s own team, and a written list of what is still open and why

Still open, and why

Two redirect engines still active. One owner has to be chosen and the rules migrated after a traffic audit.
Hosting performance. Two to six second loads and intermittent 503s need server logs from the host.
Duplicate header navigation blocks, deferred to their own sitting on a healthy site.
A stale site address setting behind the session drops and the licence warning.
No backup schedule covered the work window. Flagged to the school.