# The Leveson Case study by [Eoin Villarin](https://amvprosox.com/about). WordPress ยท Hospitality, 2024, Role: Web Developer. Canonical: https://amvprosox.com/case-studies/the-leveson The Leveson, a modern Australian pub, restaurant, and bar in North Melbourne. Their WordPress and Breakdance site handles menus, functions, and bookings, and I keep the doors open online. ## Key results - **99.9%** Uptime record - **0** Security incidents - **24/7** Site monitoring - **100%** Pages loading clean ## The challenge The Leveson is a modern Australian pub, restaurant and bar on Leveson Street in North Melbourne, a local favourite known for its chicken parmas, grassed courtyard and function spaces. The Leveson WordPress website has to earn its keep at peak times. A pub site is busiest on a Friday afternoon. Menus are checked, tables are booked and functions are enquired about, almost all on phones and often within minutes of each other. If the menu is out of date or the booking button fails, those customers simply go elsewhere. The Leveson needed menu content that stays current, booking paths that never fail and a look befitting a contemporary venue inside a Victorian building. It also needed to sell its function rooms for weddings, engagements and corporate events, and promote big days such as Grand Final Day and Derby Day. ## The solution I built the site on WordPress with Breakdance, with menu and function pages that staff can update easily and booking and contact actions kept prominent throughout. The navigation mirrors how guests use the venue. Restaurant covers book a table online, the restaurant menu, wine list and a pre-order form. Bar covers the beer list and upcoming events. Function lists each space on its own page: Arden Bar, Hotham Room (Boardroom), the Queensberry Room and the Courtyard. Specials, Gallery and Contact complete the menu. A Book Online button sits in the header on every page and opens the venue's NowBookIt reservation system, so table availability is always live. Trading hours, happy hour times and kitchen hours appear in the footer, answering the most common questions instantly. Videos and reviews, employment and a sitemap round out the structure. I maintain and monitor it continuously, and it has never dropped offline during service. ## A North Melbourne pub, restaurant and function venue The Leveson combines a traditional Victorian exterior with a modern interior, a relaxed courtyard with a retractable roof and an elegant upstairs function room with high ceilings and original stencilled walls. It trades lunch and dinner, with acoustic sessions and DJs on weekends. Its guests include locals looking for a regular pub, after-work groups, diners planning a weekend meal, sports fans on major event days and couples or companies planning functions. Each group arrives with a different question: what is on the menu, can I book a table, what is happening this weekend, can we host our event here. The website had to answer all of them quickly, in a style that matches the venue's contemporary character. ## Menus, bookings and events on The Leveson WordPress website The Leveson WordPress website keeps the most-used content one tap from the homepage. - **Restaurant:** online table bookings, the restaurant menu, wine list and a pre-order form for groups. - **Bar:** beer list and upcoming events, including major days such as Grand Final Day and the Derby Day after party. - **Specials and gallery:** current offers and photos of the food, bar and spaces. Menu pages are built so staff can update dishes and prices without touching the layout, which keeps information current and avoids outdated menus frustrating guests. Every page carries the Book Online button, so a guest who checks the menu can reserve straight away. ## Function room pages for weddings, engagements and corporate events Functions are a major part of the business, so each space has its own page: Arden Bar, the Hotham Room (Boardroom), the Queensberry Room and the Courtyard. Planners can see the character and setting of each room and choose the one that suits their event. The Function Areas overview explains the range of events the venue has hosted, from weddings and engagements to product launches, birthdays, closed venue functions and sit-down dinner parties. Photography carries much of the persuasion here, so galleries are optimised for quick loading on mobile. Every function page leads to a contact path, making it easy for an event planner to move from browsing to enquiring. ## Fast, mobile-first pages for peak-time traffic Most visits happen on phones at busy times, so performance and clarity were treated as features. Lean Breakdance layouts, compressed photography and a limited plugin set keep pages quick even when traffic spikes before the weekend. The footer answers practical questions immediately, including trading hours, happy hour and kitchen times, address and phone, which reduces calls during service. Clear page titles and headings help the venue appear for searches such as pub in North Melbourne, function rooms North Melbourne and restaurant bookings. For the technical side of responsive pages, see my guide to [Interaction to Next Paint](https://amvprosox.com/blog/interaction-to-next-paint-inp-guide). ## Continuous monitoring so the doors stay open online A pub's website has to be ready every day of the week, especially around big events. I maintain The Leveson with WordPress, Breakdance and plugin updates, 24/7 uptime monitoring, security hardening and scheduled backups, and check booking links and menu pages after every update. The results row reflects that routine: a 99.9% uptime record, zero security incidents and every page loading clean, and the site has never dropped offline during service. For a regional pub and motel I also support, see the [Erica Hotel](https://amvprosox.com/case-studies/erica-hotel) case study. If you run a pub, restaurant or function venue and want a site that handles Friday-afternoon traffic with ease, [get in touch](https://amvprosox.com/#contact-form). ## Tech stack WordPress, Breakdance, PHP, CSS Live website: https://theleveson.melbourne