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Portfolio · Emergency Rescue · 7 engagements · 2023 to today

Your site got slow yesterday.

A core update dropped your traffic. A migration broke your cache. The last developer tried and could not fix it. This page is for site owners who need the problem gone today, not next quarter.

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rapid response
  1. 01
    Dropped

    Scores fall, traffic disappears, or a migration/update breaks the site. The owner notices because revenue stops, not because a metric changed.

  2. 02
    Diagnosed

    Real-user monitoring installed, field data read, root cause identified within hours. Not a guess. Not a screenshot of a lab test.

  3. 03
    Fixed

    The smallest change that moves the needle, shipped on staging first, verified against real traffic, then pushed live.

  4. 04
    Held

    Monitoring stays running. 28-day validation cycles watched. Regression caught before the owner notices.

The second-opinion buyer.

You hired someone. They tried. They could not fix it. Maybe they told you the problem was unfixable. Maybe they made it worse. Maybe they just billed you and moved on. You are not back to square one: you are past square one, with more damage and less trust. That is the hardest engagement to walk into, and the one where the diagnostic matters most: the previous developer already tried the obvious fixes. What is left is the non-obvious cause hiding behind a symptom that looked like something else.

what the previous dev saw

A high LCP number. A failing INP score. A red circle on PageSpeed Insights.

what the second read finds

The LCP element is lazy-loaded by configuration. The INP is caused by a script the previous dev installed to fix the score. The red circle is a symptom of a cache bypass the previous optimization introduced.

Two of the rescues on this page were explicitly second opinions: FIXD Automotive (previous contractors failed on the Elementor build) and Creative Escapes (previous engineer fixed real issues but could not isolate the remaining LCP delay).

00 · 7 rescue engagements

7 sites rescued, with turnaround times.

Each rescue below names the trigger, what the previous developer tried (where known), how fast it was fixed, and the outcome. No invented prices. No made-up timelines. The numbers are what the clients could re-run.

FIXD Automotive

OBD2 e-commerce, WordPress/Elementor

turnaroundSame-day staging demo, live fixes shipped over a weekend.
trigger

Core Web Vitals failing despite multiple optimization attempts.

previous attempt

A few other contractors had tried and failed. The Elementor build with its widget CSS/JS, an outdated hello-elementor parent theme, and an Ajax loop grid whose pagination stopped loading images under a script manager made standard fixes ineffective.

outcome

CWV passing, maintained across four engagements over two years.

"We were nervous because we had a few other contractors try their hand at improving our Core Web Vitals with no success due to Elementor's & LCP being tricky. Milan first made changes to our staging site and showed us what speed improvements were possible and then replicated those on the live site over a weekend."
Upwork 5.0

Z-Dog Media

Thrive Themes publisher

turnaroundFirst site fixed, second site followed.
trigger

Core Web Vitals failing on a Thrive Themes build.

previous attempt

Other developers had given up on the Thrive Themes template structure. The publisher returned for a second site after the first was fixed.

outcome

CWV passing on both sites.

"Milan achieved what others could not. Highly recommended."
Upwork 5.0

gfcnieuws.com

Dutch news publisher

turnaroundCWV green by November 1. Discover clicks returned within days.
trigger

Google Discover traffic dropped from 1,000+ clicks/day to zero after a core update in August 2023.

previous attempt

Not specified. The publisher came directly for the CWV fix.

outcome

Discover traffic recovered and held.

"Solved all the CWV issues I had and passed CWV."
Publisher, gfcnieuws.com · Upwork 4.85

Swiss Prime Lab SA

Shopify Plus, mission-critical mobile performance

turnaroundInitial LCP and TBT fixes within the first sessions; ongoing for 6 months (15.5 hours total across 16 work diary entries).
trigger

Shopify store with a 7.3 MB payload forcing the browser to download everything before rendering the product image. LCP and TBT in the red.

previous attempt

Not specified. The contract title was literally "Fix a Mission-Critical Shopify Mobile Performance Bottleneck".

outcome

LCP and TBT remediated via fetchpriority, font subsetting, and delayed-execution strategy for Weglot and marketing scripts.

Creative Escapes

Holiday and photography tours, WordPress/Uncode

turnaroundOne week from engagement to live deployment. Homepage LCP from 4.4s to 3.4s, privacy-policy page from 3.4s to 2.4s, cambodia page from 4.0s to 2.3s.
trigger

Persistent 5-second Lighthouse LCP on a 29 KB image. Another performance engineer had already been hired, fixed several real issues, but could not isolate the remaining LCP delay.

previous attempt

The previous engineer found and fixed an incorrect image preload, a stale mobile CSS rule, font optimization, and CLS issues. But the core LCP problem remained: init.min.js accounted for less than half the modeled delay, and the rest was unidentified.

outcome

Independent second opinion diagnosed the architectural render-delay in the Uncode theme. Two plugins and two code snippets shipped, each toggleable.

"Highly recommend Milan, he gets straight to the point, and systematically completes the assignment in record time. If you want page speed optimisation without all the fluff, he's your man."
Upwork 5.0

MasalaBody

Health coaching, WordPress

turnaroundUnder 48 hours.
trigger

PageSpeed score under 50, load time 11.8 seconds. Red across the board.

previous attempt

Not specified.

outcome

Score from under 50 to 90+. Load time from 11.8 seconds to 1.7 seconds on GTmetrix, under 1 second on Pingdom.

"In less than 48 hours, Milan made the Google PSI test go from red and under 50 to 90+ on mobile and desktop. Load time dropped from 11.8 seconds to 1.7 on GTmetrix and under 1 second on Pingdom."
Upwork 5.0

properpasty.co.uk

Specialty food e-commerce, Shopify Dawn

turnaroundGSC validation passed within 30 days.
trigger

Mobile LCP over 4.5 seconds ("Poor") in Google Search Console field data.

previous attempt

Not specified.

outcome

LCP dropped below 2.5 seconds ("Good") via Liquid critical path refactoring, fetchpriority, image preloads, and deferred non-critical scripts.

The turnaround ledger.

EngagementTriggerTurnaroundOutcome
FIXD AutomotiveCWV failing, other devs failedSame-day staging, weekend liveCWV green, held 2+ years
Z-Dog MediaCWV failing, others gave upFirst site, then secondBoth sites CWV green
gfcnieuws.comDiscover 1k+/day to zeroAug to Nov 2023Discover recovered, held
Swiss Prime Lab SAMission-critical Shopify LCP6 months, 15.5 hoursLCP and TBT remediated
Creative Escapes5s LCP, previous dev stuckOne week4.4s to 3.4s homepage, 2.3s pages
MasalaBodyPSI under 50, 11.8s loadUnder 48 hours90+, load under 1.7s
properpasty.co.ukLCP >4.5s Poor30 days to GSC greenLCP <2.5s Good

All turnaround times are from the engagements themselves. Quotes are verbatim public Upwork feedback. Case narratives paraphrased from project records, never pasted from private correspondence. No prices listed; scoped on request after the free audit.

When you need this page.

  • !

    A core update just tanked your traffic

    Google Discover went silent. Search rankings dropped overnight. The site was fine last week. This is a performance problem disguised as an SEO problem, and the fix is technical.

  • !

    A migration broke your cache

    New host, new CDN, new caching layer. TTFB went from under 1 second to over 3. The hosting company says everything is configured correctly. It is not.

  • !

    The previous developer tried and failed

    You paid someone. They made changes. The score did not move, or it got worse. You need an independent second opinion, not another round of the same fixes.

  • !

    Your ads are spending but not converting

    Google Ads clicks are landing on a page that takes 5 seconds to load. You are paying per click for a landing page your visitors leave before it opens.

Your site does not have to stay slow.

Free audit, honest findings, no obligation. If the problem is small, you will be told it is small.

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