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title: HIOUSA Project Overview – Client Inputs & Research Summary GPT generated portion, may be inacurate date: {{date}} tags: []

HIOUSA Project Overview – Client Inputs & Research Summary GPT generated portion, may be inacurate

🧩 General Context About the Organization

  • Parent Company: Prize Indemnity Holdings (PIH), Reno, Nevada
  • Owned Brands:
  • Hole-in-One USA
  • Hole In One International
  • Odds On Promotions
  • Prize Indemnity Holdings
  • Key Contacts:
  • Amy Fanter – Director of Marketing (primary contact)
  • David Bebout – IT Director (technical access & infrastructure)
  • Historically relied on offshore developers, now transitioning to U.S.-based partners due to communication difficulties.

🛠️ Current Job Scope: HIOUSA.com

  • Primary Issue: Three critical CSS files disappear periodically after cache clears or plugin updates, breaking homepage layout.
  • Site Configuration:
  • Theme: Flat Bootstrap Child Theme (v1.5, outdated)
  • Builder: SiteOrigin Page Builder
  • Hosting: WP Engine (production, staging, and dev environments)
  • WordPress Version: 6.8
  • PHP Version: 8.2
  • Quick Quotes Module:
  • Amazon-based insurance quoting API
  • Isolated from rest of WordPress site do not modify
  • Backups:
  • WP Engine performs nightly backups
  • Last known good backup: April 23, 2025
  • Plugin Notes:
  • 25+ plugins, most with auto-updates disabled
  • Includes: Contact Form 7, SiteOrigin Widgets, Wordfence, Smart Slider 3, Yoast SEO, etc.

💬 Client Statements (Amy Fanter)

  • With the company over 20 years
  • HIOUSA site acquired during pandemic and quickly outperformed their flagship
  • Believes CSS issue tied to bad PHP edits by offshore devs
  • Wants to preserve current design during peak season, open to redesign after
  • Prefers Elementor over Divi, but new HIOI site is in Divi
  • Interested in:
  • Short-term: Fixing the HIOUSA CSS bug
  • Mid-term: Potential theme update or rebuild
  • Long-term: Help launching HIOI site and cleaning up Odds On blog
  • Seeks a responsive, U.S.-based developer for ongoing support
  • Notes:
  • Odds On blog is “a mess”
  • Past developers used PHP hacks for speed, causing instability
  • Values transparency, communication, and WordPress fluency

🔍 Technical & Operational Insights

  • All sites hosted on WP Engine
  • Unified infrastructure across brands
  • Staging/Dev environments are stable and safe to use
  • Amy can manage:
  • HTML/CSS basics
  • Plugin installs and basic troubleshooting
  • David can manage:
  • Server configuration
  • Firewall, access control, and backups
  • Key risk: Prior developers implemented speed optimizations via raw PHP instead of standard WordPress plugins

💡 Opportunities Identified (Your Research & Observations)

  • Recommend clean rebuild instead of chasing legacy bugs
  • A modernized theme update may solve current issues
  • Odds On blog is WordPress-based and under your control—easy modernization opportunity
  • HIOI Divi site is close to launch but needs blog setup and polish
  • Odds On Promotions suffers from:
  • Outdated design
  • Confusing blog navigation
  • Lack of CTAs and SEO elements
  • Visual inconsistencies on mobile

My Aproach Sorry for not using GPT for this section but it was not giving the correct information

My Discoveries

  • the site is built with a theme that basicly allows you to drag a drop a text editor and then custom code the particular section of the page.
  • there has been more then one change made to the wordpress php files. The one that I think is causing the issues is where they added fonts awsome which according to the client is when the site started having issues.

My Approach

  1. Throughly reviewed site before commiting to anything with client.
  2. Determined that a simple patch is not a viable solution. There are just to many issues and it is not worth the clients time or my reputation to try and patch this together.
  3. Determined on a strategy to deal with this
    • Propose a site rebuild with limeted support for existing site until the new one is launched (in the initial meeting the client acnowledged that this may be nessary so I think that this will not be a issue)
    • Propose a retainer imidiatly

Pricing

Project Scope: - Rebuild the entire site from scratch on a clean WordPress install using Elementor - Maintain existing layout/branding, with optional modernization if desired - Migrate content and structure into a clean, responsive theme - Integrate Quick Quotes as a placeholder (no changes to AWS backend) - Deliver a fast, secure, and stable site on WP Engine’s infrastructure - Apply performance and accessibility best practices

Timeline: ~2–3 weeks Ownership: All assets and code transfer fully to you upon payment Flat Rate: $2,400 – $3,000

Tier Monthly Fee Hours Included Notes
Basic $375 10 hrs Light maintenance, plugin updates
Standard $700 20 hrs Page updates, light design/dev, multi-site coverage
Premium $1,200 30 hrs Priority access, Divi build support, content overhauls

Benefits: - WP updates and plugin maintenance - Staging site support (via WP Engine) - Layout, copy, and content changes - Priority response and availability - Premium includes planning calls and 10% rollover of unused time

💡 Bundle Offer

  • If you commit to any retainer tier for 3 months, I’ll apply a 10% discount to the rebuild cost.
  • If you commit to either of the uper tier plans for 6 months I will apply a 10% discount to the retainer The hoped for outcome is that she will sign up for the middel tier for 6 months. In light of that I will try and aim for the Premium tier.