Modern PHP, including the code you inherited
Laravel and Symfony applications, plus the unglamorous rescue work of dragging a legacy PHP codebase back into maintainability.
- PHP 8.3
- Laravel
- Symfony
- Pest
PHP & Laravel Development
PHP 8 is a genuinely good language and Laravel is a genuinely good framework. Most of the bad reputation comes from codebases written before either existed.
We do both halves: new Laravel builds with queues, tests and typed domain code, and staged rescues of older systems where the business cannot afford a rewrite.
14
Legacy PHP rescues completed
0
Full rewrites required to modernise
-67%
Median error rate after refactor
What is actually included
Scope is agreed line by line in the framing week. This is the menu it gets drawn from.
- Laravel and Symfony application builds
- Legacy PHP assessment and refactoring
- PHP 7 to 8 upgrade programmes
- Queue, scheduler and job architecture
- API platform development
- Database design and query tuning
- PHPUnit and Pest test coverage
- Deployment automation
Typical stack
Four steps, and you can stop after any of them
Every stage produces something you own outright. Nothing is held hostage to the next invoice.
- 01
Framing week
A paid week where we map the constraints, the existing systems and what success has to look like in numbers. You keep the output whether or not we continue.
- 02
Architecture & plan
A written technical plan with the trade-offs made explicit, a milestone schedule, and a fixed budget band for the first release.
- 03
Build in the open
Two-week increments, a preview URL from day three, and a Slack channel where your team can see the work rather than wait for a demo.
- 04
Launch & operate
Load testing, runbooks and monitoring before go-live, then a support window while your team takes the wheel — or a retainer if you would rather we kept it.
Usually paired with
Projects rarely stay inside one service line. These are the ones that most often come along with it.
Web Development
Product surfaces, customer portals and marketing platforms built on a typed stack with tests, previews and a real deployment story.
Read moreNext.js Development
App Router architecture, server components, streaming and caching strategy from people who have shipped it under load.
Read moreReact Development
Component architecture, data-fetching discipline and rendering performance for interfaces that stay complicated for years.
Read moreNode.js Development
APIs, workers and integration services with real observability, backpressure handling and a deployment path that is not a mystery.
Read moreWordPress Development
Block themes, custom editorial experiences and headless WordPress for teams that publish constantly and refuse to file tickets for a heading change.
Read moreHTML5, CSS & Front-End Foundations
Semantic markup, modern CSS architecture, motion and accessibility work — the foundations that decide whether the rest of the build feels good.
Read moreWhat clients say when we are not in the room
These are lightly edited excerpts from reference calls, published with permission.
PHP & Laravel Development: the questions we get asked
If yours is not covered, ask it directly — the reply comes from whoever would lead the work.
With a paid framing week. Two of our people read the existing code, talk to whoever operates the system daily, and produce a written technical plan covering approach, trade-offs, milestones and a budget band. You keep that plan regardless of what happens next.
The people you meet in the framing week. Clownmind runs senior-only delivery teams of three to five, and we do not hand projects to a second bench after the pitch. PHP 8.3, Laravel, Symfony and the rest of the stack listed above are things our team uses daily, not things we subcontract.
Most first releases land between eight and sixteen weeks depending on integration surface. We ship in two-week increments with a preview environment from day three, so there is something real to look at long before launch.
Load testing, runbooks and monitoring go in before go-live. After that you either take it in-house with a documented handover — which is what we design for — or keep us on a retainer for operations and continued delivery.
Yes, from the first commit. Work happens in your repository, under your organisation, on your cloud accounts. There is no proprietary Clownmind framework you have to keep paying to license.
Ready to talk about PHP & Laravel Development?
Thirty minutes, no deck, and a straight answer about whether we are the right studio for it.
