The Sächsische Rechtsanwaltsversorgungswerk was founded by the Rechtsanwaltsversorgungsgesetz from the 04th of Juli 1994 (SächsGVBl. 1994, Seite 1107 ff. It is situated in Dresden.
In 2012 our TYPO3 Developer Kay Strobach was contacted as a freelancer to create the first version of the web page on the domain s-r-v.de. The Website was made with the latest available technologie in 2012, so it contained the TYPO3 core and some extensions including Templavoila.
In Late 2018 the web hoster of the page informed our client that the needed PHP Version 5.6 will no longer be supported. This was the moment where the update to a newer TYPO3 version could not be postponed any longer. So the client contacted us, as the original creator is now in our Team, to talk about an upgrade of the beloved TYPO3 instance which served them well for over six years without any problems.
The clients requirements were easy:
Additionally we added some common requirements which apply to every project. This includes, to reduce technical debt, to reduce the amount of extensions used and to be standard complient and secure.
After analyzing the instance we had several options to proceed. The first one was to simply migrate to TYPO3 v9 and a newer version of templavoila. The second one was to migrate the content to new content elements and rearrange the elements and use backendlayouts
We finally went with the second solution, this was the most effective solution, as the complete instance had only around 30 pages. An additional benefit was, that the instance now only contains TYPO3 core extensions and one site package for the layout.
The website of our client is now made 100% with TYPO3 core functionality. There are no third party extensions in that installation anymore. This will make updates and upgrades easier in the future, especially as we integrated composer. A side effect is, that we can check for updates with composer now and have all code changes in a git repository.
To make that website future proof and complient with modern web technologies some additionaly steps have to be taken. This includes a mobile layout, SEO, Accessability and best practice optimisations. We will discuss these changes with our client in the next months.
The conclusion is, that TYPO3 Updates are more cost effective, if the implementation sticks to as much core functionality as possible. This also includes discussing each and every extension used in each project. Some projects require custom code, most simple marketing pages do not require a lot extesions from third party developers. With all the new functionality shipped with the TYPO3 core most of the structural content elements can be replaced with the backend layout functionality of the TYPO3 core.
