I have a site that has been built from scratch by a few different programmers ov

Question

I have a site that has been built from scratch by a few different programmers over time. The first programmer, who built the initial system and database, was not very tech savvy. Other programmers who worked later also did things their own way, taking shortcuts, patching things instead of dealing with root cause issues, as a result I got a website which is buggy and unmaintainable.

The site is made for wholesale distributors who come to buy and sell products. They register an account and take advantage of premium features. There is quiet a bit of different things that go on under the hood, for example, to stop fraudsters to continuously registering new accounts, we automatically block their account if any of the previous info they registered with is matched with their new registration info. We also have robot call and verify their phone number.

We also developed a system where anyone can send an email to our designated email address, and their email body and subject contents get posted as a buy and sell ad.

I want to rebuild the site. I've been thinking that in order to prevent future problems associated with programmers doing things their own way, it is good to migrate the whole site to a CMS such as Drupal or Wordpress and rebuild other features in the form of plugins. That way I suspect, the core, the framework, of the site will remain untouched by programmers, and every time core CMS updates come out, my site remains up-to-date. what do you think? Is this a good idea? Or should I keep the site custom but hire a savvy programmer who could try to fix all the problems, optimize PHP and Database.

I also would like to know if migrating my site and database is going to be expensive?

Explanation / Answer

This is a really good question, but I feel it is perhaps to localized. We struggle with this question all the time in IT: build or buy ? And if we build, what do we start with? The answer is, "it depends".

How good of a fit is a CMS to your business domain? Your website doesn't really sound like a traditional content site to me, but if it is then what you might do, is just setup your own little copy of Drupal (or whatever) and start prototyping - sketching out - out how you would build the site with it - what are the gaps you need to fill with custom plugins (put some static placeholder there). Practice doing some workflows with your prototype. This will be well worth your time, and I think you'll be able to answer your own question after doing it.

The second part of your question "hire a savvy programmer" - well that's really the hard part isn't it? Here's the thing: no one wants to fix your crappy website. Anyone who you can find to do it, is either going to try and convince you to let them build The Next Great System (their way) - or they are just doing time because they couldn't find any better job to do. Even someone smart and conscientious isn't going to get inspired by the prospect of doing this.

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