[jtolmar]

This is the right way to think about it. My only disagreement is that I'd do the local DB before the local service. A bunch of local versions of the service pointing at the production DB sounds like a time bomb.

And it's definitely worth emphasizing that having no framework, MVC, or templating library is not a real problem. Those things are nice if you're familiar with them, but if the team is familiar with 2003 vintage PHP, you should meet them there. That's still a thing you can write a website in.

[Aeolun]

> if the team is familiar with 2003 vintage PHP, you should meet them there. That's still a thing you can write a website in.

You can write a website in it, but you cannot test it for shit.

[rendall]

If this is true, OP can consider writing tests of the website using a frontend test suite like Cypress, especially with access to local instances connected to local databases.

[paledot]

There's no value to retroactive unit testing. Retroactive tests should be end-to-end or integration level, which you certainly can do without a framework.

[Arcanum-XIII]

Framework are not needed to test. I've been testing and validating my code way back, in C. Not because I was an early adopter (I'm still not), but because I needed to debug it, so... faster.