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Issue 029BriefingRescueRef 111

The difference between a website rescue and a website rebuild

Understanding the distinction between a website rescue and a rebuild is critical for commerce operations. One extends an existing investment; the other replaces it. Misidentifying the need leads to wasted effort and budget.

Neil Boughton· Technical Director
5 min readReviewed November 2024
"A website rescue extends the life of an existing asset; a rebuild replaces it entirely when its foundational value is lost."
Written by
Neil Boughton, Technical Director at iWeb
Neil Boughton
Technical Director
29 years at iWeb

Neil leads platform architecture and integration strategy at iWeb. He has designed ERP and commerce integration patterns across manufacturing, wholesale and retail, and writes about operational resilience, release governance, observability, and the infrastructure decisions that determine whether large programmes stay stable under pressure. Bias toward durable, measurable systems over architectural theatre.

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Issue 048Field Note · Rescue

What a senior engineer actually does in the first 48 hours of a rescue project

The first 48 hours of a rescue are forensic, not creative. The principal engineer's job is access, containment, replication, and one defensible document by the end of day two.

Andrew··4 min read
Issue 029Field Note · Rescue

Rescue benchmark: build pipeline health, and the three numbers that predict the next outage

Proactive monitoring of build pipeline metrics, specifically build time, failure rate, and deployment frequency, can predict and prevent site outages.

Andrew··4 min read
Issue 046Position · Rescue

Why most rescue projects are actually replatforms in disguise

A rescue is a diagnosis, not a fix. The honest version of that diagnosis is often a replatform on a shorter timeline than the business expected.

Ian··4 min read
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