From Security Breach & Zero Revenue to 627K Users, $700K+ Jobs Revenue & 40K Newsletter Subscribers
October 2024: Dead in the Water
A security breach at iFocus, the previous vendor, took DailyDispatch.com completely offline. The vendor was unable to recover their backups or rebuild the site. Zero revenue. Zero traffic. No website.
I was tasked with building a competing solution — proving that a ground-up rebuild could deliver faster than the vendor's backup recovery. Within weeks, I had a working site live while iFocus was still attempting to recover.
| Metric | Oct 2024 (Breach) | Apr 2026 (Now) |
|---|---|---|
| Website Status | Offline — breach | Live, stable, monitored |
| Active Users | 0 | 52K/month (627K total, ↑4,889%) |
| Page Views | 0 | 137K/month (3.5M total, ↑8,138%) |
| Jobs Board Revenue | $0 | $700K+ / year |
| Newsletter Ad Revenue | $0 | Additional revenue stream (Advanced Ads tracking) |
| Newsletter Subscribers | 0 | 40K subscribers |
| News Data Streams | Manual | 500+ automated RSS feeds |
| Content Refresh | Manual | Automated every 6 hours |
| Custom Plugins | 0 | 15+ purpose-built plugins |
| Infrastructure | Vendor-dependent | Self-managed + daily DR backups |
The race against iFocus: While the previous vendor struggled to recover backups, I built a completely new WordPress Multisite platform from scratch. Working site was live faster than their recovery timeline.
500+ RSS data streams built with Feedzy RSS Feeds Pro + custom filter plugin — automated ingestion, filtering, deduplication, and categorization every 6 hours across fire service, EMS, and public safety news. This replaced a $100K/year third-party system the organization was evaluating (Carma).
Jobs board launched — custom WP Job Manager extender plugin (v2.3.0) with Square invoicing integration, spam protection, custom submission forms with 8 sections and 30+ fields, TinyMCE with restricted toolbar for security.
Newsletter platform — customized MailPoet serving 40K subscribers across 20+ regional lists (California, Oregon, Texas, etc.). Pre-filtered RSS content verified by editorial team, then curated into weekly newsletters.
Events system — custom event submission plugin with Square invoicing, rich text editor, category mapping, and form validation.
Built custom Feedzy filter plugin for global feed filtering: keyword logic (comma=OR, plus=AND), deduplication, state categorization. 500+ feeds every 6 hours — replaced a $100K/yr Carma subscription.
Purpose-built WordPress plugins: Job Manager Extender (v2.3.0), Event Submission, SEO Meta Generator, Feedzy Filter Helper, MailPoet Ad Stats, News Page, RSS Featured Images, and more.
Custom submission form (8 sections, 30+ fields), Square invoicing, spam protection, TinyMCE with restricted toolbar, state multiselect, file uploads. 57 E2E tests passing.
Custom event form with Events Manager integration, Square invoicing, rich text editor, spam protection, category mapping. 26 Playwright tests.
Full production server cloned daily to a separate Vultr data center (Seattle) via GitHub Actions + Cloudways API. Old clones auto-cleaned. Never without backups again — lesson learned from the breach.
Two sites: dailydispatch.com (news/jobs) + firetechu.dailydispatch.com (FireTechU training). Git repo, Docker local dev, staging + production environments.
| Plugin | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Job Manager Extender v2.3.0 | Custom job form (8 sections, 30+ fields), Square invoicing, spam protection, billing meta |
| Event Submission v1.0.1 | Custom event form with Events Manager integration, Square invoicing, rich text |
| Feedzy Filter Helper | RSS feed filtering and content processing rules |
| SEO Meta Generator | Automated meta descriptions and URL schema management |
| Custom News Page | State-based news pages with search, date filter, subscription widget |
| MailPoet Ad Statistics | Email ad impression/click tracking integration |
| Custom Admin | ACF article link columns, source domain parsing, quick edit integration |
| Custom Subscribe | Select2 multi-list newsletter subscription with regional targeting |
| Advanced Ads Data Cleaner | Automated ad tracking data cleanup and maintenance |
| RSS Featured Images | Featured image extraction and assignment from RSS feeds |
| Lighthouse Fixes | Performance optimizations for Lighthouse scoring |
| Maintenance Banner | Stop/notification banner for editors during maintenance |
| Calendar Fix | Events Manager calendar timezone issue fixes |
| Anti-Spam Enhancer | Elementor form spam protection |
| SEO URL Schema & Legacy Redirection | Legacy URL redirects, Yoast sitemap fixes for job_listing_tag |
The fire service jobs board is the organization's largest digital revenue stream. Custom intake form with keyword/location search, tag filters (Chief, Entry Level, Fire Marshal, Lateral, Full Time, Part Time, Seasonal), Sourcewell partnership integration, and Square invoicing for paid listings.
Customized MailPoet platform sending 35 newsletters daily — each weekday, every region gets its own curated edition:
In addition to the $700K+ jobs board, the platform generates advertising revenue through newsletter sponsorships and display ads:
GitHub Actions: daily Cloudways server clone (7am UTC) + old clone cleanup (9am UTC). Full disaster recovery from day one — never again caught without backups.
htaccess + Cloudflare rulesets blocking MJ12bot, Dotbot, and other crawlers. Fair use media plugin for proper image attribution.
Wordfence with strict firewall patterns, Jetpack monitoring, CSP/X-Frame/XSS headers, ModSecurity (scoped to wp-admin), Akismet anti-spam, htaccess + Cloudflare bot blocking, rate limiting (20 req/IP/5min). Regular security update cycles.
Flying Press + Object Cache Pro + Varnish caching. Lighthouse audit scripts. Performance threshold monitoring.
Yoast SEO, proper taxonomies/breadcrumbs, canonical URLs, sitemap optimization, meta descriptions, author E-E-A-T bio pages.
305 completed out of 411 total across 5 projects. Classifieds project at 100% completion (75/75 events and announcements processed).
Daily Dispatch is one of several interconnected platforms I built and manage for the Western Fire Chiefs Association:
| Platform | Role | Key Metric |
|---|---|---|
| Daily Dispatch | Fire service news, jobs, events, newsletter | 627K users, $700K+ jobs/yr |
| WFCA Fire Map | Real-time wildfire intelligence map | 453K monthly users, 21 pipelines |
| FireTechU | Training, webinars, professional development | Multisite under DD |
| WFCA.com | Organization website with fire map widget | Embeddable widget integration |