It's not really the front end that was heavily modified. It was the back end. Added in-house payment processor. Made the script actually work correctly. Fixed security issues.Tested the basics. Added connected lottery script. Did same with that script. Still needs complete testing before official launch.
I can relate, the backend is where all the work happens, sometimes testing happens for many years; the worst thing is launching it prematurely so its better to be 100% sure than launching it and then reverting it to beta
And yes many things can influence a projects timeline. From the heavy amount of criticism from the initial launch also somewhat paralyzed me after realizing how not ready I was.
You can take your time until you perfect the site's functionality; its better to have a notification on the platform that your site is in beta so your visitors know what to expect and can even suggest what to improve, Gmail was in beta for 5 years; they show notification that its on beta but things work out right