Code takeover
You already have a website and are preparing to replace it with a more dynamic, better looking and better designed platform. This is normal! A website is not a fixed element set in stone. It evolves, changes, sometimes you just rearrange blocks or change the colour, sometimes you go further and rethink the whole architecture, and then sometimes the easiest and quickest way is to start from scratch.
What we often forget is that you may also change your host, or ask another company for occasional maintenance operations. Or simply for one reason or another, you change web service providers but are fine with your site – which will continue to evolve, be updated, etc., in short, to live.
This is called code takeover: the web provider ‘takes over’ the existing code and continues to make it work, to work with it as a basis. We explain.
Code can be recycled
Depending on the project, it may not be necessary to start from scratch – whether it’s because your site changes hands, or because you want to give it a new look.
Spade offers this code recovery service. We also provide, after discussing with you the suitability of the initiative, the transfer of pre-existing content to a new site.
But back to the code.
It’s about taking the digital assets that are already in place and reusing them, correcting them, tidying them up and improving them. The aim is to make them last over time. It’s a bit like changing the zip on a bag or a garment that has not finished living but needs to be reinforced in certain places.
The rewriting of code depends on the age of the current code, and on whether you want to modify it or maintain it. If it allows you to maintain your site in its current state for some time to come, like everything else and like all development, it is not possible indefinitely.
How does it work?
There are a number of things to consider before you start recycling code.
Technological debt
Before proceeding with the recovery of code, we carry out an assessment of the technological debt of this code. That is to say, we assess the various requirements to ensure the maintainability of your solution. Type of CMS, version of the CMS, version of PHP and necessary server elements, again the versions and the possibility of updating these are evaluated. If the assessment is positive, if the different versions can be updated, the code can be considered as recyclable.
Possible impossibilities
If essential components of the CMS have been modified, if the encoding of the database has been altered, it is very likely that the difficulty in recovering the code or the content, and adapting it, represents a cost greater than that which a complete redesign of the site would represent. The assessment allows us to determine the precise state of your assets.
Requirements / conditions for an optimal recovery
It is essential that we have access to the back-end of your CMS in administrator mode or to your current server.
Without this access we cannot ensure the recovery of the code, the database or the theme.
If you no longer have access, we can only consider an automatic recovery of the content.
Some projects where we have done this
Some of our biggest projects started out as code rewrites! You can find a selection of them below. You may also visit our Projects page!
Bruxelles Formation
Bruxelles Formation is the organisation responsible for the public service of vocational training for the French-speaking population of the Brussels-Capital Region. Following a public contract, Spade took over the maintenance and development of the Brussels Training website. Built on WordPress, the site uses different APIs and data sources and offers a variety of content for a large and diverse audience.
Green European Foundation
GEF is a political foundation at European level funded by the European Parliament. It is linked to, but independent of, other European green actors such as the European Green Party and the European Free Alliance of Greens. GEF publishes various websites (e-learning, expert network, presentation site) to support its activities, which Spade has taken over, develops and maintains.