Creating a new website – legacy issues 2

Here is a question to think about.

If you switched off your webserver now what services would stop working?

Well probably your website, but what else?

What about all those other bits and pieces that seemed a good idea to squirrel away because, well, we have a server.

So this is the other issue that troubled me when we rebuilt our website in March ‘what would stop working’?

Here is my list:

• SNAP surveys because we were not using a cloud based service – we moved our account onto SNAPs servers which involved talking out our survey team colleagues.
• Two private log in areas to transfer business information – not quite an intranet but fiddly to recreate in a new environment especially when there were a lot of different URLs in circulation.
• A private page for office use when the web might be our only communication channel with staff – being recreated in email alerting software.
• A custom built database of report recommendations – built in .NET and which does not work in our new environment – we are linking to a National Archives copy until it can be rebuilt.
• Other odd bits and pieces like our Contact form – we built a new one then had problems with emails from GSI addresses
• A toolkit built in flash that was not value for money to rebuild as it has been custom built – we put it on a .NET server, tidied it up and linked across to it.

I suspect this is only a small amount of issues compared to other organisations however dealing with these ‘legacy issues’ all added to the workload.