Ivan Đurđevac
Menu
All case studies
KlikFXLegacy SaaS modernization

Modernizing Development and Deployment for a Complex SaaS Platform

Modernizing the development environment and production delivery of an established SaaS platform spanning Laravel and Yii2 services.

My role
Senior SaaS Engineer & Technical Lead
Selected technologies
Laravel · Yii2 · Docker · Docker Compose · Redis · Nginx
Modernized KlikFX scheduler administration interface
A modern scheduler interface within the broader KlikFX SaaS platform. Account information has been redacted.
In this case study

Context

Earlier KlikFX scheduler module interface
An earlier scheduler workflow illustrates the product behavior that modernization needed to preserve.
Earlier KlikFX administration interface for account constraints
The mature platform spans multiple administration areas and framework boundaries.

KlikFX is an established SaaS platform with a codebase spanning Laravel and Yii2 applications and several supporting services. The work took place in a live product environment, where improvements had to respect the existing architecture and keep the platform operational.

The central challenge was not a greenfield rewrite. It was creating a more dependable way to develop, run, and release a complex existing system.

My role

I worked hands-on across the application and infrastructure, with responsibility extending beyond feature implementation into the engineering environment and production delivery.

My work included:

  • understanding the boundaries between the Laravel and Yii2 parts of the platform
  • improving the local development setup
  • containerizing application and supporting services
  • defining Docker Compose orchestration
  • configuring Nginx and Redis within the application environment
  • improving the production deployment process
  • reducing the operational risk of releasing changes

This required balancing modernization with the constraints of a mature product rather than introducing change in isolation.

Development environment

System overviewSimplified architecture
  1. 01Existing applicationsLaravel & Yii2
  2. 02Shared environmentDocker Compose
  3. 03Supporting servicesNginx & Redis
  4. 04Production deliveryCoordinated release transitions
Docker Compose brings Laravel and Yii2 together with Nginx and Redis in a shared, reproducible environment.

The platform depends on multiple application and infrastructure components that need to work together consistently. I used Docker and Docker Compose to make those dependencies explicit and reproducible.

The resulting environment brought the Laravel and Yii2 applications together with services such as Redis and Nginx under a shared setup. This made the system easier to start, reason about, and maintain across development and deployment contexts.

The important outcome was not containerization for its own sake. It was a clearer operational model for a codebase that had accumulated complexity over time.

Deployment modernization

I also worked on a zero-downtime deployment approach for the production platform.

For a live SaaS product, deployment design must account for more than copying a new version to a server. Application processes, web routing, shared services, and release transitions all need to be coordinated so that users are not exposed to a partially deployed system.

The deployment work focused on making releases safer and more repeatable while preserving compatibility with the existing stack.

Engineering approach

The project required a pragmatic modernization strategy:

  • preserve working product behavior
  • improve development and operational consistency incrementally
  • understand legacy framework boundaries before changing them
  • keep infrastructure aligned with the needs of both applications
  • design deployment changes around continuity of service

This is the kind of work where technical leadership is expressed through careful sequencing and risk management as much as through new code.

Outcome

KlikFX demonstrates my ability to work inside an established SaaS system, navigate a mixed-framework architecture, and improve the path from local development to production without treating a rewrite as the default answer.

The result was a more structured development and deployment foundation for ongoing work on the platform.

Your next project

Have a similar challenge?
Let’s think it through.

Start a conversation