From crash to comeback: a website rescue for Silver Surfers
We helped Silver Surfers, a New Zealand jewellery business run by Sandra Muir, recover from a hacked, malware-ridden site and get back online — fast.
Meet Sandra Muir
For over 30 years Sandra has poured her passion for beautiful jewellery into Silver Surfers, building relationships with suppliers around the world — Thailand, Indonesia, Nepal and India — and supporting communities like the home-based knitters in Nepal. Now based in Papamoa, just down the road from our Te Puke base, Sandra and her family are the driving force behind the business. You can read her story on the Silver Surfers About page.
The challenge
For four years Sandra had battled to get her ecommerce site working properly. Her previous provider had overcharged her and left the site worse off — slow, buggy and, critically, compromised with malware, on a host that had locked her out and made a clean backup impossible. She needed a way out and a fresh, secure foundation.
Our mission: a total overhaul in a few days
This was a full-scale digital rescue and rebuild. With a business to save, we tackled every pain point in a matter of days:
- Server migration: moved the site off the old, restrictive host onto a secure, stable VPS.
- Total core rebuild: rebuilt the corrupted core from scratch for a clean, stable foundation.
- Plugin & theme overhaul: replaced bloated, buggy plugins and themes with a fresh, optimised setup.
- Database optimisation & bug fixing: cleaned and optimised the database and squashed countless bugs.
- Speed, cache & CDN: implemented robust caching and a CDN for fast load times nationwide.
- Image optimisation: optimised every image — vital for a product-heavy store.
- Malware cleanup: deep-scanned and removed all the malicious code left behind.
The result: Silver Surfers back online in days — secure, fast and a true reflection of the quality Sandra puts into her work. Browse the Silver Surfers online store to see it.
Beyond the rescue: one consistent brand across web and social
Sandra’s logo is her own, but we rolled the Silver Surfers brand out consistently across her website and her Facebook presence — the same look, voice and quality at every touchpoint, so customers recognise her wherever they find her. That’s the difference between having a website and having a joined-up online presence that works.
2 Comments
Sandra Muir
I can not thank you enough Steve Fawcett, for all the late nights and effort you put in to save my website. On my logo there is a super hero on the front of the surf board and from now on I’m going to call him ‘ Steve, force it’..the force is with him lol . This has been the most nerve wracking time of my life, where my domain name was no longer even in my name, even though it had been for decades, and I did not even have control of my business email. I am back up and running with all my information safe and intact..I feel so relieved. Before I felt so disheartened. You are a true genius Steve. The stuff you know just blows my mind. I have learnt some awesome tech words ..cracked me up that the emails can spoof ..you helped ease the tension and I can highly recommend Steve to get the job done. Even if it’s just to check someone else’s work or get a second opinion. I never grew up with computers and I need to be able to trust my web developer..Steve actually saved my website about five years ago too..when I was being mislead and ripped off…thank you so so much ..anyone wants a chat with me just give me a call..my numbers easy to find on my cranking website
Te Puke Digital
Never again haha jokes. Glad we got it up! and now I can do my own cool projects 😉 You can stop email spamming me now hehe. Love how you support others overseas with some of the product you sell, really inspiring