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CH 00Rescuefor the site nobody wants to touch · assessment $2,500 flat

Every rescued site starts the same way: someone finally says out loud that they don't know what's under the hood anymore. That admission is the hard part. The rest is engineering.

The tow line holds — hover to raise the beamthe beam rises as you arrive

CH 01

You're here because

four familiar signs

The platform is past its prime

Drupal 7, 8, or 9. Magento 1. A WordPress core from years back. The .NET app from 2014, the React build nobody can compile anymore. Whatever it runs on, the pattern is the same: no more fixes coming, and every month makes the eventual move bigger — while rebuild quotes arrive priced like ransom.

The person who built it is gone

The agency folded, the freelancer moved on, the docs were never written. What you have is a black box that happens to be your website.

Updates stopped being applied

Somewhere along the way patching got scary, so it stopped. Now the gap between installed and current is itself the risk.

Everyone quotes you a rebuild

Sometimes right, often lazy. A real assessment separates 'this needs a migration' from 'this needs six focused fixes' — before you commit to either.

CH 02

How a rescue runs

assessment first, always

01 / The assessment

Fixed price, written findings. What you actually have, module by module — what’s urgent, what’s fine, what it honestly costs to make it boring again. Yours to keep whoever you hire.

02 / The stabilization

Security gaps closed first, backups proven restorable, monitoring turned on. The bleeding stops before the surgery is scheduled.

03 / The path

A costed roadmap to supported ground — Drupal 11, current WordPress, a modern stack, or simply a hardened steady state, whichever your site actually needs. Then Air Time keeps it from ever getting this way again.

Rescue assessment — $2,500 flat

Written findings — and the fee you paid credits toward the rescue itself, or your first month of Air Time, when either books within 30 days. If we do the work together, the assessment ends up free. See the full diagnostics ladder for the performance, checkout, and upgrade variants.

CH 02.2The first 48 hourswhat actually happens when you call

Hours 0–4

Control check: domain, hosting, admin access. What you own, what's reachable, what's locked. If something critical expires soon, that jumps the whole line.

Hours 4–24

A backup exists and has been restored somewhere safe — a backup is a rumor until then. Monitoring turns on, so from day one, nothing gets worse silently.

Hours 24–48

Known security gaps closed, unknown admin accounts retired, and the written findings started: what you have, what's urgent, what it costs to make boring. You end the second day knowing exactly where you stand.

CH 02.5Straight answersasked by every rescue, answered once

Can an abandoned Drupal 7 site still be rescued?

Yes. Past end-of-life doesn't mean past saving — it means the order of operations matters: security gaps first, proven backups second, then the costed path to Drupal 11 or a supported steady state. A monolithic D7 with millions of nodes has made that trip with every record intact.

Do I have to rebuild from scratch?

Not always — and anyone who says so before an assessment is guessing with your money. The $2,500 assessment separates "this needs a migration" from "this needs six focused fixes," in writing, before you commit to either. (Holding a rebuild quote you haven't signed? That's the Second Opinion — before is cheaper than after.) Aftercare lives in the Air Time maintenance program so it never gets this way again.

CH 03Send up the flarejudgment-free, seen it worse

Let's get you to open water

The URL, whatever version you think it is, and what finally prompted this. Think of a rescue like a portage: heavy for a stretch, then the lake opens up. Nobody here will make you feel bad about the state of it — rough shape is the whole business.