A meaningful part of the work we do at Expression 37 involves inheriting Craft CMS sites that were built by developers or agencies who are no longer involved. The circumstances vary: the agency has folded, the relationship has ended, the original developer has moved on. But the practical challenge is always similar.
You’re starting with a site you didn’t build, with code you didn’t write, and decisions that were never documented. Here’s what we look at first and why.
Before anything else: do we have the access we need? That means the Craft control panel, the hosting account, the domain registrar, the Craft license, and ideally the version control repository.
The Craft license is specific to the CMS and worth checking early. If the license is registered to the previous agency’s account, it needs to be transferred. The same applies to any paid plugins purchased through the Plugin Store. Missing or incorrectly registered licenses can surface as unexpected errors or put the site into trial mode.
Once access is secured, the first technical check is versions: what version of Craft is running, what PHP version the server is on, and whether the two are compatible with each other and with the installed plugins.
This tells us immediately whether the site is at risk of breaking due to a server environment change, and whether there are any urgent security concerns. A site running Craft 3 on a server that’s about to move to PHP 8.2 is an urgent situation that needs a plan before the hosting provider acts.
Craft sites vary significantly in how they use plugins. Some are built almost entirely on native Craft functionality. Others depend heavily on plugins for core features, image transforms, form handling, SEO, and commerce. An audit of installed plugins, their versions, and their current maintenance status tells us a lot about the ongoing support requirements and any immediate vulnerabilities.
Plugins that are no longer maintained, or that are incompatible with current versions of Craft or PHP, go on the risk register immediately. A plugin that’s end-of-life but handling critical functionality needs a replacement plan.
How is the site deployed? Is there version control? Is there a clean Composer setup, or has someone been manually copying files? Is there a staging environment, and does it actually reflect the production site?
A Craft site maintained properly should have a clean Composer setup, a Git repository, and a deployment process. When these are missing, it significantly increases the risk of something going wrong during routine maintenance or updates.
Craft’s content modelling is one of its strengths, but how the site is structured in terms of sections, entry types, and field layouts can vary enormously. Understanding the content structure matters for ongoing maintenance: is it logical, is it what editors actually use, and is there anything that looks like it was added for a purpose that’s no longer relevant?
A content structure that’s been built and then left, with entry types and fields that no one uses any more, is not a problem in itself, but it’s a signal about the level of care the site has received.
The output of this initial review is a clear picture of what the site is, what state it’s in, and what work needs to happen before ongoing support can be put in place. Some sites are well-maintained and just need continuity. Others need remedial work first. Knowing which situation you’re in is the starting point for everything else.
If you need a developer to take over a Craft CMS site someone else built, get in touch with Karl to talk through the handover.
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Most clients come to us when their site has started to feel like a risk rather than an asset. Whether the agency relationship has ended, an upgrade has been delayed, or the site has simply grown beyond what it can handle, a conversation costs nothing.
Get in touch with KarlTrusted by established businesses and growing brands across the UK
Expression 37 works with a small number of clients at any one time. These are some of them.
Karl founded Expression 37 in 2007 and has worked exclusively with ExpressionEngine and Craft CMS ever since. He does not take on work in other platforms and does not hand work to other developers. Expression 37 is deliberately small, because the kind of support that matters to clients with business-critical sites is specific to their site, not something that scales in the conventional sense. If you work with Expression 37, you work with Karl.
Find out how we workKarl has been instrumental in delivering the ExpressionEngine development requirements for our client. Karl very quickly became part of our extended team as he is reliable, dependable and thorough in everything he does. Karl has a genuine desire to see his clients succeed and he will go out of his way to help them achieve that. Karl worked hard on our projects and was so helpful all along the way. He is driven, talented and an absolute pleasure to work with! Any organisation would be lucky to have Karl on their team.
Wayne Smallman
Octane Ltd.