Replatforming a Manufacturer's Corporate Website Under Live Security Pressure, Without Losing SEO or Consent Compliance

At a glance

Business context

The project began as a scoped visual and structural refresh of the company's corporate website. Partway through the build, an external security review of the live legacy environment reported numerous issues to the client's IT and purchasing function, the internal team responsible for assessing and acting on that kind of risk. The stakes were immediate: the findings concerned a system still in daily use, and remediating it in place would have meant investing further effort into infrastructure that the new platform was already going to replace.

Rather than treat the finding as a separate, competing project, the team weighed it against the migration already underway and concluded that finishing the move to the new environment was the faster, more effective response. Delaying the relaunch to patch a platform on its way out would have extended the window of exposure, not shortened it.

Challenges

• Migrating years of undocumented configuration. The legacy site held SEO settings, custom content-type configuration, SMTP, consent and contact-form setup that had accumulated over time with no single record of what existed. Each had to be found, verified and carried over without breaking existing search visibility or lead capture.
• A live security review mid-build. An external review of the existing environment surfaced genuine concerns about exposed credentials and infrastructure weaknesses while the new platform build was still underway, forcing a decision about priorities under time pressure.
• Keeping an adjacent property stable. The organisation runs a related site on the same domain family. It had to be left untouched while the primary site moved to a newer PHP runtime, so the two systems could not simply be upgraded together.
• Consistent compliance across languages. Consent banners, privacy footers and GDPR disclosures had to read correctly and consistently in both languages the site serves, not only the primary one.

Key decisions and trade-offs

Finish the migration rather than patch a platform being retired. When the security review landed mid-build, the team chose to accelerate the cutover to the new, actively maintained environment instead of investing in remediating infrastructure already scheduled for replacement. The trade-off: some findings were explicitly left for the client to decide whether to re-verify after launch, rather than Babini Mazzari guaranteeing every one resolved by the migration alone.

Carry consent configuration across, rather than rebuild it from zero. Because the site already had an active consent setup, the team migrated the existing Iubenda codes and footer links as they were, instead of reconfiguring consent management from scratch. That preserved continuity of the prior consent records, at the cost of inheriting some of the existing setup's structure rather than starting clean.

Upgrade the primary site's runtime, leave the adjacent property alone. PHP 8.4 went live on the main site while a related property was deliberately kept on its existing, older PHP version through server configuration. That contained the change to the system that needed it, rather than upgrading both at once and widening the risk of the release.

Approach

Foundation and design validation

Environment setup and a styled demo gave the client something concrete to react to early. Iterative review rounds confirmed the direction before full build-out began.

Template build and content population

Page templates were developed on the new platform, and the site's content was loaded and reviewed against the final design before moving into configuration work.

Client training and full configuration migration

The client's team was trained on the new site while, in parallel, every piece of configuration from the legacy platform, SEO settings for key pages and content types, Iubenda consent codes, SMTP and contact-form setup, was reviewed and carried across. This phase ran alongside the external security review of the existing environment, which added urgency to finishing the migration rather than extending it.

Production release and activation

The new site went live on a current PHP runtime, with analytics reconnected, consent management and bilingual GDPR footer links in place, the sitemap refreshed, and the monitoring platform activated and linked through the team's management dashboard.

Outcomes

A modern, actively maintained platform

The site now runs on a current PHP version and an actively maintained theme platform, replacing a legacy build that had no formal update cadence.

Compliance preserved through the transition

Consent management and GDPR disclosures carried over cleanly and now read consistently in both of the site's languages, rather than being rebuilt and re-approved from scratch.

Ongoing managed oversight

The engagement continues as a managed service, with quarterly checks covering plugin, theme and platform updates; the most recent pass alone updated around twenty components in one cycle.

A faster path off a system under review

Because the cutover was accelerated rather than delayed, the organisation moved off the environment under security review and onto a newly built, monitored one, giving its IT function a current baseline to work from instead of a legacy system accumulating further risk.

Who this is relevant for

This approach suits manufacturing and industrial organisations running a corporate website on a legacy platform, especially where a security or compliance signal makes delay risky. It shows how to replatform without pausing content delivery, losing SEO equity or breaking consent compliance, even when the schedule has to move faster than planned.

FAQ

Can a website migration be accelerated if a security review raises concerns about the existing platform?

Yes. When the issues sit on infrastructure that is already being retired, finishing the migration to a new, actively maintained environment is often faster and more effective than remediating a platform on its way out.

What happens to existing SEO and consent settings during a replatform?

They don't have to be rebuilt from zero. Cataloguing the legacy site's SEO configuration, consent codes and form setup, then migrating them deliberately, preserves continuity instead of resetting it.

How do you upgrade a website's runtime without breaking related systems on the same domain?

Scope the upgrade to the system that needs it and leave adjacent properties on their existing, working configuration until they are ready to move too, rather than upgrading everything at once.

Does a website relaunch need an ongoing maintenance plan?

Yes. A relaunch is the natural point to activate monitoring and a recurring update cadence, so plugins, themes and platform components stay current instead of drifting again.

Related services

• Web Development: rebuilt the site and migrated templates, content and configuration onto the new platform.
• GDPR & Data Protection: migrated consent management and GDPR disclosures across both site languages, carried through into ongoing managed checks.

Next steps

If a corporate website is overdue for a platform refresh, or a security or compliance signal has suddenly made the timeline urgent, Babini Mazzari can help assess what can be migrated safely, what needs to change, and how to keep the relaunch on schedule without losing ground on SEO or compliance.