Preparing WriteDaily for Migration: Database Hardening and Security Hygiene

The WriteDaily Laravel migration is in progress — the models are mapped, the routes are defined, and the core writing loop works in the new stack. But before any production switch, there’s preparation that has nothing to do with application code.

Database Hardening

The existing database has five years of entries, pace data, sentiment arrays, and user records. Before migration, I documented every table, column, and index — the raw-PHP era left some schema decisions implicit, and the migration makes them explicit through Laravel migrations. I added proper foreign keys with cascade behaviour where appropriate — the original codebase didn’t enforce referential integrity at the database level. Query patterns from five years of usage informed new indexes; the most common query now has a composite index on (user_id, start_time).

Backup Verification

WriteDaily has always had backups, but “having backups” and “having verified backups” are different things. Before the switch, I ran a full restore to a staging environment, verifying that every entry, pace record, and sentiment array survived the round trip. Entry body checksums were compared between production and restored backup — zero mismatches across 50,000+ entries. Encrypted, air-gapped copies are now stored separately from the primary server.

Security Hygiene

Five years of incremental server configuration leaves cruft. Pre-migration cleanup: every package on the server documented, unused services removed. SSH keys, database users, and service accounts audited — several old keys revoked. Strict Transport Security enabled, cipher suites tightened.

Why This Matters

WriteDaily holds personal writing. Journal entries, emotional processing, half-formed ideas. The people who trust the tool with that content deserve to know it’s handled carefully.

The migration itself isn’t the hard part. Making sure nothing is lost, leaked, or corrupted during the transition — that’s where the attention goes.

The existing product continues to run at writedaily.co throughout. When the migration ships, I’ll post the details.