CakePHP & Yii Modernisation
Moving off unsupported CakePHP and Yii versions incrementally, onto a stack you can hire for and a security posture that passes review.
The problem is rarely the framework, it is the support horizon
CakePHP 2 and Yii 1 were good frameworks. The difficulty is that both reached end of life years ago, which means no security patches, dependencies pinned to PHP versions that are themselves unsupported, and a hiring pool that has moved on. That combination becomes a compliance problem before it becomes a technical one.
The trigger is usually external: a penetration test, a cyber-insurance questionnaire, or an enterprise customer asking which PHP version you run. At that point the timeline stops being negotiable.
We migrate incrementally rather than rewriting. A router in front of both applications, shared sessions, and modules moved by risk and value, so the security posture improves from the first month rather than at the end of an eighteen-month project.
Teams that start here often pair it with CodeIgniter to Laravel migration, Laravel to MERN migration and monolith to serverless migration.
The framework being old is a technical inconvenience. The framework being unsupported is a compliance finding, and those come with deadlines.
Why these applications become urgent
Four pressures that tend to arrive together.
The framework and its dependencies stopped receiving fixes, so any disclosed vulnerability stays open indefinitely.
Locked to PHP 5.x or early 7.x, which fails audits and blocks the use of any current library.
Few engineers want to work on it, so the team shrinks to whoever already knows it and knowledge concentrates dangerously.
Manual deployment with no tests, so every change is risky and the release cadence slows to a crawl.
What a modernisation engagement covers
A supported stack reached in steps, not in one leap.
A dependency and vulnerability audit that gives you something concrete for the security or insurance conversation immediately.
A proxy in front of both applications so traffic moves module by module with rollback by configuration.
Laravel or Symfony chosen against your team, your hiring market and your existing patterns rather than by preference.
Shared sessions and legacy password hash support, so users are never forced to reset credentials mid-migration.
Input validation, parameterised queries, CSRF protection and dependency updates applied as modules move.
CI, automated tests and one-command deploys, so change stops being an event.
From risk audit to a supported stack
Security posture improving from month one.
Dependencies, vulnerabilities, PHP constraints and module criticality documented for both engineering and compliance.
Modern application, routing layer, shared session store and CI, proven with one low-risk module.
Modules moved by risk and value, each with characterisation tests and a routing-level rollback.
Security fixes applied as modules move, with the highest-risk endpoints prioritised first.
The legacy application retires once routing shows it serving nothing.
The stack behind our modernisations
Mainstream, supported and hireable.
A framework with a published support horizon and a deep hiring pool.
The migration boundary as configuration rather than as a deployment.
Users keep their sessions and their passwords throughout.
Automated testing and deployment, often for the first time in the application life.
What this looks like in production
A failed penetration test with a ninety-day deadline
A healthcare services provider failed a client penetration test on a Yii 1 application running PHP 5.6. Their largest customer gave them ninety days to present a remediation plan or lose the contract.
A full rewrite could not be delivered in ninety days and everyone knew it. Instead we produced a dependency and vulnerability audit in the first fortnight, then migrated the three highest-risk modules, covering authentication and every endpoint handling patient data.
That was enough for the customer to accept the plan. The remaining modules moved over the following year with no deadline pressure and no downtime.
Modernisation that answers the compliance question first
The audit in week two gives your security and insurance conversations something concrete, long before the migration itself is finished.
We move one slice at a time behind a router, with both systems live, so every step is small and every step is reversible.
A working demo and a written note every Friday covering what shipped, what slipped and what it means for the date. No status theatre.
Nothing goes live in one jump. We run in parallel or behind a flag until the numbers say it is safe to switch over.
