Sample concept, not a client project
Birchwater Canoe Hire
birchwater-canoe.example
The businesses in our samples are fictional.
The developer’s gone and the site’s still running
Or it isn’t. Either way, you’ve got a site or an app nobody understands, and you’d like to know where you stand.
Sound familiar?
- The person who built it stopped answering.
- Nobody has the login.
- It’s PHP from 2012 and the host keeps sending warnings.
- The plugin that runs the booking page hasn’t been updated since before you hired anyone.
- You aren’t sure what you own, and you’re afraid to touch it.
That’s fine. Most of the work is finding out what’s there.
What to send
- The web address.
- Whatever access you have, even partial.
- Any emails or invoices from the person who built it.
- A sentence on what’s wrong.
We don’t touch anything before we agree what we’re doing. Look first, then talk.
The audit: $1,200, flat
You get a written report. What exists, what it’s built on, what’s risky, what it’d take to fix, move or rebuild, and roughly what each of those costs.
Fixes are quoted from the audit, and each stands alone. If you take the report and go elsewhere, that’s a fair thing to do.
Prices in CAD, before applicable taxes.
Three ways it can go
- Patch it
If the foundation is sound, we fix what’s broken and leave the rest.
- Move it
Same site, new home, current software, your accounts.
- Rebuild it
If it’s older than anything we’d put our name on, we say so and quote a proper replacement.
We won’t tell you it needs a rebuild unless the audit says it does.
An illustrative scenario
What it could look like to move an old PHP booking site to a modern stack. Before and after are described, with no numbers, because it’s a scenario and not a job we did.
About your logins
Share access in a way we agree on first, never in a plain email. When the work’s done, change the passwords. We’ll tell you which ones to change and which accounts we used.