Mac Hearing Clinic | Sydney AU

This case study highlights the value of our Annual Website Maintenance plans, and the items that we cover. Machearing.com.au has been on my Annual Maintenance Plan since January 2020.

Urgent Request for Website Support

Yesterday (5th Feb 2026), I received an urgent message from staff at Mac Hearing Clinic in Campbelltown, Sydney, saying that their website booking system (WP Forms) wasn’t working. I immediately tried to open the WP Admin area from ManageWP and the page wouldn’t open! Instead, there was a WordPress “critical error.” I tried to open the Home page – same problem!

I realised that the day we’d been anticipating had finally arrived – the old “Structure” design theme from Thememove had finally died. It had been on life support for almost a year, with PHP errors and the like. It worked up until WP 6.9 but WP 6.9.1 had been released the day before the site died. A series of plugins had also been updated, as had some server software. This was a problem we had anticipated and I had already begun a redesign of the site using GeneratePress ages ago. The new version had been sitting in the wings, awaiting permission for deployment.

Troubleshooting

I tried reverting to the previous WordPress version, but that didn’t help. I renamed the /plugins/ directory to see if I could get the site restarted, but that didn’t help either.

• Next, I opened the new design on my development server, updated WP and all plugins, then created a full backup using Updraftplus.
• In the Mac Hearing site’s cPanel, I installed a fresh version of WordPress into a subdirectory. I also installed Updraftplus, and uploaded the backup files.
• That was followed by using the “Restore” function to install the new GeneratePress version of the site.
• I then edited the WordPress Address and Site Address in Settings | General so WordPress loaded from the new subdirectory, and also edited the index.php to load the site from the subdirectory.
• The new site appeared live on its domain. I checked every page for display and functionality and discovered that the WP Forms contact form wouldn’t work. I installed Fluent Forms and imported the WP Forms. Then I changed the short codes on the pages that the forms were used on.

At this point, the website was working fine, all pages were displaying correctly, and the contact form was working. The next task was to reconfigure the page speed optimisation processes.

WordPress Page Speed Optimisation

The old website had always been, in my opinion, somewhat unattractive. In my 13 years of experience in implementing page load speed optimisation on WordPress, bloated plugins are the greatest impediment to speed, along with ancient PHP, HTML and CSS coding structures and practices. An old-school website theme loaded with unnecessary functions and features is bad enough. That can prevent optimisation (minification and concatenation) of JavaScript and CSS files and applying defer/delay to JavaScript can break functionality. In stark contrast, the GeneratePress theme takes the minimalist approach, and I’ve been using it since its release in 2014.

Expertise gained through years of trial and error in WordPress speed optimisation suggested that the following approach would work well with the GeneratePress/WP Bakery combination.

• GeneratePress itself offer major performance boost, a case in point being the ability to load your fonts locally via the Font Library and Typography settings.
• WP Rocket Cache: page caching, remove unused CSS, CSS & JavaScript minification and concatenation, defer and delay Javascript.
• Docket Cache: uses opcache to create a very efficient persistent object cache. Improved performance from caching database queries.
• Asset Cleanup: allows removal of numerous unnecessary WordPress functions, including XML RPC (a security threat), comments in HTML and overall, greatly reduces the number of HTTP requests. The huge benefit is the ability to force site-wide unload of code that’s only used on one page – like contact forms! Then you can activate the code on the page it’s required on.

As the Google Page Speed Insights graphs below show, the site is now significantly faster than before:

This work was carried out within the parameters of the Annual Maintenance Plan: at no additional cost. I operate on the “swings and roundabouts” principle. I know that after I take over management of a website and apply preventive maintenance measures, most websites won’t experience a significant issue within any given year. Now and again, one site will have a serious problem. I then do whatever is required without feeling compelled to charge extra. Which contributes to an average client retention of 10+ years. My business model is more about service than it is about revenue generation.