Legacy PHP & Laravel modernisation

Who this is for

Organisations running an application that has served them well but is getting harder to change: an old PHP or Laravel version, no tests, a developer who has left, slow pages or a growing fear of deploying.

Why we don’t start with a rewrite

A system that has run a business for years encodes hundreds of decisions, edge cases and rules that nobody wrote down. Rewrites tend to rediscover those the hard way, and they deliver nothing to users until they’re finished. Incremental modernisation delivers improvements continuously and keeps the knowledge that’s already in the code.

What modernisation involves

1. Understand it — read the code, map the critical paths and find out where the risk is.
2. Make it safe to change — version control, a repeatable deployment and tests around the parts that matter most.
3. Get onto supported versions — upgrade PHP, Laravel and dependencies step by step.
4. Improve the structure — untangle the areas that change most, and leave stable code alone.
5. Extend it — add the features, integrations and APIs the business needs next.

Laravel upgrades

We’ve upgraded Laravel applications across many major versions since Laravel 4.2. Each jump has its own changes to routing, configuration, authentication scaffolding and dependencies. This website itself was moved from Laravel 10 to Laravel 13 in the same careful way: remove what’s no longer needed, adopt the current application structure and keep every existing URL working.

Older PHP applications

For applications built without a framework, or on one that’s no longer maintained, we often introduce Composer, a modern autoloader and automated tests first, then move functionality into a well-supported structure over time. See PHP development for more on the kinds of codebases we work with.

Relevant experience

Much of Coder Studios’ client work has been long-term support of existing applications, including years of work on a custom PHP application that was beyond an agency’s normal skillset and a charity’s bespoke management system that we’ve developed and maintained over several years.

How an engagement usually works

We start with a code review and a written plan. You choose where to begin, and we deliver in small releases so there is always a working, improved application at the end of each step.