As a result of our meticulous planning and execution, Howe Tools secured their website without disrupting operations.
A Site-Saving Magento Update without Disrupting Operations
Protection against malicious code injection
Cross-site scripting (XSS) prevention
Two-factor authentication for added security
The Client
Howe Tools Limited is an online retailer in the UK specialising in supplying power tools, hand tools, and related equipment to tradesmen and companies.
The client has two generations of experience in tool dealing and is renowned for its customer service, ready and comprehensive inventory, and no-delay deliveries.

The Brief
First Pain Point
The Magento version they’re using has reached its end-of-life, leaving them vulnerable to security attacks.
Second Pain Point
But upgrading would significantly disrupt their e-commerce operations because they’re running Magento 1 with customisations that would not be automatically migrated to the newest version.
Third Pain Point
Their company is renowned for timely deliveries that their enterprise clients rely on to operate. Any delay or malfunction on their ecommerce website due to an update could impact their strong reputation for fast deliveries.
This hesitation delayed the upgrade, but as security risks became too significant to ignore, action was necessary to protect both their reputation and security.
The Solution
The only tenable solution was to replatform the website to Magento 2 with as little disruption as possible. To execute this, we needed to plan ahead and move with precision.
The Work
Before any updates started, we conducted a full audit of Howe Tools’ site to get a clear picture of the work that was needed.
This included meticulously reviewing installed extensions and managing dependencies, checking for available extension upgrades through the client’s accounts, and assessing and updating custom modules for full compatibility with PHP 8.3.
After these nimble preparations were completed, the team executed a full migration to Magento 2 on Howe Tools’ site. We painstakingly rebuilt their custom design from M1 to M2, resulting in identical look and feel, and optimised custom functionalities to ensure seamless performance on the new platform.
Dev Team resolved server-side issues and managed key service upgrades, including Redis, OpenSearch, and MySQL.
The Results
Howe Tools’ website was successfully updated to Magento 2 without any significant downtime. By virtue of this update, the client has regained access to all the security updates it needs.
This allowed our team to work on over 150 fixes and enhancements on the client’s site immediately after the update.
Example of the fixes:
Protection against malicious code injection
Cross-site scripting (XSS) prevention
Two-factor authentication for added security
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