How a frontend-only blue pulse and green border clarify multi-site maintenance status

A developer building a multi-site WordPress maintenance tool faced the challenge of making it visually clear which site was actively being processed and which had finished. Instead of blinking red — deemed fatiguing during long runs — the team chose a gentle blue pulsing border for active sites and a solid green border for recently completed ones. Rather than building a new backend API endpoint, the developer parsed existing streamed maintenance logs on the frontend to detect the currently running site, avoiding any backend changes. A state-transition function automatically marks a site as done when the active site ID changes, triggering a re-render of the list. The implementation also includes a prefers-reduced-motion media query to disable the pulsing animation for users with vestibular sensitivity.