Case study · Digital recovery
Back online the day after they signed, after 41 days dark.
A Ventura County nonprofit coalition lost its website when its developer and hosting provider disappeared. We rebuilt it from the public web archive, had it live the day after signing, and then put their memberships, donations and event tickets on the site.
Engagement: Site Rescue, then a full rebuild and online payments. A Ventura County nonprofit coalition. July to September 2026.
The business problem
The site went dark on June 4, 2026. The coalition's web designer and hosting provider had both disappeared, every former site administrator had moved on, and the host confirmed the suspended hosting could not be reinstated. The files were not coming back from anyone who had held them. A new executive director, a few weeks into the job, inherited a website nobody could reach and nobody could log into, while the monthly hosting charge kept coming out of the coalition's bank account. The coalition's annual meeting was set for October, and members had no way to pay online.
What we built
The only surviving copy of the site was in the Internet Archive. We pulled the site back out of the archive, reassembled it as a working WordPress site on managed hosting, and pointed the coalition's own domain at it. It was live on July 15, the day after the coalition signed. The full rebuild shipped on Monday, August 17, the date we committed to in writing. On August 27 the annual meeting page went live with ticket and sponsorship checkout, and the executive director approved it in writing 19 minutes after we sent it. In September we added company, phone and billing details to the membership and donation forms, a required "what is this payment for?" choice, and multi-ticket orders, each built and signed off by the coalition's office manager the day she asked. The ticket price moved from $175 to $200 on October 1 at 6am on a schedule, with no one logging in to change it, and was checked on the live page that evening.
Results
What changed
41 days offline, then live again the day after signing (July 14 signed, July 15 live).Full rebuild delivered on the committed date, August 17, 2026.Annual meeting checkout live August 27, 2026, approved by the client 19 minutes after delivery.Donations, membership dues and event tickets all taken on the coalition's own site, through the card processor they already used.Hosting, maintenance and up to two hours of updates a month included for the first twelve months.
41
July 15
Archive + senior review
The Outcome
The coalition owns a working website again, and its members pay dues, donate and buy annual meeting tickets on it.
Method
How the recovery worked
Assess what was available
We inventoried archived pages, cached content, brand files, and any remaining access to rebuild from.
Reconstruct the architecture
Using the recovered content, we rebuilt the site structure, navigation, and key pages, with our team reviewing the reconstruction.
Apply senior review
Every page, visual, and line of copy was reviewed for accuracy, brand continuity, and technical soundness.
Relaunch and hand over
We deployed the site and verified performance.