Cite as: Real Problem AI problem “What should you check first when you inherit a website somebody else built?”. Opportunity score 7.7 out of 10 (severity 7, AI feasibility 8, market signal 8, competition gap 8). Category Others. Trend Agents. Source signal: r/webdev thread on what to check first when you inherit a website, 27 August 2026, 41 upvotes and 71 comments.. Canonical URL: https://www.realproblem.ai/archive/what-should-you-check-first-when-you-inherit-a-website-somebody-else-built.
What should you check first when you inherit a website somebody else built?
Taking over an existing site often means production is the only copy, backups that look fine are silently truncated, forgotten admin accounts are still active and premium licences have lapsed, leaving unpatched code, and there is no single report that tells the new owner what they are standing on.
Who has it: Freelance developers and small agencies taking over client websites built by someone else.
Why it is archived
Trimmed to 100-cap (lowest opportunity_score)
Scoring breakdown
Existing players
- Security and vulnerability scanners · Find known vulnerable plugins, not whether a backup can actually be restored.
- Backup plugins and host snapshots · Report success, and per the thread can pass while the archive is silently incomplete.
- Personal takeover checklists · Every developer keeps their own, and none produce a report the client can read.
What they are missing
A takeover readiness report run on day one: test restore a backup into a sandbox, list every admin account and when it last logged in, check each plugin and theme licence and patch level, and hand the client a plain summary of the risks.
Stack hint
#N28S · Canonical URL: https://www.realproblem.ai/archive/what-should-you-check-first-when-you-inherit-a-website-somebody-else-built