One Year In, Major Glitch – How the Wealthy Affiliate Training Helped Me Fix It

One Year In, Major Glitch – How the Wealthy Affiliate Training Helped Me Fix It

Just as I was hitting the one-year mark at Wealthy Affiliate and about to write my “One Year Here” blog, something unexpected landed on my desk that had to take priority — my local site, the one I’d been building and improving since the beginning of the year, and had seen moderate success with, suddenly broke. And it broke in ways I couldn’t explain.

Menus acting strange. Page elements disappearing. Some pages half-loading or refusing to load at all in live view. One of those weird scenarios where everything looked fine in the WordPress dashboard and inside Elementor… but the live site? A total mess.

Ironically, I only noticed because I’d been contacted by an organic visitor — a potential customer, asking if I’d go to London for a survey. That’s what caused me to check out the work area on the site, and when I checked the live site, and saw the chaos for myself straight away, nothing to do with what the customer had asked.

At first, I did what most of us do when something goes wrong: I assumed it was something small. A typo. A global style override. A rogue widget. Maybe one of the new headers I’d been experimenting with.

I spent hours tweaking. Rebuilt sections. Tidied up the menus. Refreshed and purged everything I could.

Still broken.

That’s when I turned to ChatGPT (or Mr. Chat, as I now call him). Together, we walked through dozens of possibilities — header templates, padding issues, mobile breakpoints, slider scripts, MetForm styling quirks. You name it, we tried it.

We fixed some bits, got it partway there, but the underlying glitch kept coming back.

That’s when the WA training really kicked in.

After a full year at WA — reading, building, breaking, fixing, asking questions, watching tutorials — I realised something: I’d trained myself to think like a digital problem solver.

So I scanned my mental archives and shifted gears.

It wasn’t just about where to click — it was about how to think through a problem. I remembered advice I’d seen repeatedly in the training and forums:

“Start with clearing the cache.”
“Check what was recently updated.”
“Do a plugin audit — look for conflicts.”

So I did just that. I reviewed all my plugins, checked updates, ran the list by Mr. Chat, and even emailed a couple of developers to ask about known conflicts.

To be honest, I lost interest for a bit — needed to step away. But then, out of nowhere, I had a lightbulb moment.

I came back with renewed focus:

I disabled anything that could possibly affect layout or performance.
Phone in hand (mobile view), iPad on a stand, laptop in live view, and editor running on another PC. A full test bench setup.

Three plugins in, I paused and thought: “Let’s try LiteSpeed Cache.”

Even though all research said it was solid… Even though it had never caused issues on any of my other sites… I disabled it.

Boom. Everything snapped into place.

Menus loaded. Sliders showed. Live view matched the editor. All the glitches vanished.

It was LiteSpeed Cache all along. Something about this site’s setup — Elementor, the theme, maybe even a specific widget — just didn’t play nicely with it.

I re-enabled the plugin to confirm — and the problems came straight back.

The culprit had been hiding in plain sight.

The Lesson?

WA training didn’t just teach me how to build a site. It taught me how to deconstruct one — methodically, logically, and with the right mindset (plus a little AI backup).

Twelve months ago, I wouldn’t have had a clue where to start, let alone the confidence to push through and fix it. I might’ve blamed the theme or started over.

Now? I treat issues like a mechanic would a faulty engine:
Test. Isolate. Resolve.

If you’re just starting out here at WA, take this from me:

• Keep building.
• Break stuff (you’ll learn faster).
• Ask questions.
• And always look for the lesson behind the lesson.

Because one day, a real-world glitch will land on your desk — and you’ll be ready for it.

One year in — and finally able to say, "I can do this."

Love to hear any similar stories.

Take care all

Rob