Frankensteining Old Sites Like It’s 2005
 

While everyone else is chasing shiny new AI bullshit, I’ve been elbow-deep in PHP 5.6 spaghetti keeping my old sites alive.
Dead links? Fallback redirect.
Crap DB entries? Nightly cron with duct tape.
Whole thing looks like it should be on life support, but hey — it still pays for beer. 🍺

Not rebuilding from scratch, just hacking it together until it screams “uncle.”
Feels like running a porn hospice, but the traffic keeps limping in.

Anyone else still patching dinosaurs instead of birthing new ones every month? Or am I just the last caveman swinging a club at 404s?

PHP 5.6 huh? You're just a few years behind! I have had some clients who were running 5.6 and it definitely takes some time getting it up to 8+ (although you gotta hit 8.3 or 8.4 right now to be LTS).

5.6 to 7 is a lot harder than 7 to 8. I've had some very old code that I've been updating year-by-year--originally built on 5.5--and although the deprecation warnings are annoying, it was a lot easier making the transition from 7.4 through 8.3, and now 8.4.

I think a lot of adult sites are running older code and there's a lot of stuff out there in standby mode. I think the new hotness is buying other people's bad sites and then keeping them on life support. Over time you make out with more money!

100%. The real play isn’t shiny new builds, it’s grabbing neglected sites cheap and keeping them alive. Margins are better when you buy broken assets, patch them just enough to run, and let the old traffic do the work. Not sexy, but it stacks over time.

If it works, don't fix it... some of my best converting sites are 15+ years old :)
WG

Truth — If it’s paying, it’s staying.