realschool

I work at a start-up, they built there code base over 2.5 years before I arrived. As we have grown it has become clear that there are serious problems with the code/database/framework. Everyone on the development side is well aware of this issue and knows that something needs to be done about it if we are ever to successfully grow.

The lead developer built up the product with some obscure framework that was very immature, poorly coded and inefficient in its database calls. Various developers have expressed their concern and the lead has made the decision to rebuild the core of the product by remove the old framework and building a new one with 'the best parts of various other frameworks'. However he wants to keep most of the 'view' and 'controller' code from our current version of the product.

Has anyone else done this or seen this done when a long term solution was required but there was only time for a 'quick' solution?

Is it common for a 3 year old start-up to have more business dev then product dev?

We want to encrypt or encode a config file for our web based php app, any suggestions?

Any ideas of direction for how to encrypt an elgg config file?