{"id":235,"slug":"rule-build-for-10-year-horizon","title":"RULE: Design every Candid client site for a 10-year operational horizon. Rebuild is a choice, not a forced move.","kind":"rule","scope":"business","status":"current","audiences":["kevin","claude-code","smb-owner","candid-team"],"topics":["agency-methodology","longevity-architecture"],"reference_body":"**Rule:** Candid Creative client sites are designed for a **10-year operational horizon**. The default assumption is that the site exists 10 years from now; rebuild decisions are business-strategy events, not forced moves driven by accumulated debt.\n\n**Why:**\n- Orbit Media data: average lifespan is 2y4mo across the Inc 5000; under continuous care, 6y4mo ([[orbit-media-website-lifespan-2y4mo-vs-6y4mo]])\n- Long-lived examples prove durability is achievable: Daring Fireball (24 yrs), Berkshire Hathaway (29 yrs), Craigslist (25+), Pinboard (16), GOV.UK Design System (13) — see [[longevity-named-examples-2026]]\n- The 10-year cost model ([[ten-year-cost-model-rebuild-vs-foundation]]) shows that even with retainer costs, foundation-first avoids 3× 523-day SEO recovery cycles and a 17% per-rebuild probability of never recovering\n- The [[decay-vs-compound-matrix]] documents which dimensions compound (~half) given the right architecture\n\n**How to apply:**\n- URL design: slugs are a 10-year decision (see [[rule-url-design-as-permanence-design]])\n- Dependency minimum: fewer plugins, fewer themes, fewer build-time dependencies\n- Content separated from presentation (Markdown / Postgres / headless CMS — not page-builder JSON blobs)\n- Continuous maintenance retainer is part of the engagement, not a separate sale; quarterly content refresh discipline pays for itself via [[hubspot-vaughan-historical-optimization-106pct]]\n- When a client *does* genuinely need to rebuild (business pivot, capability ceiling, compliance forcing function), do it as a planned migration with 301 redirects — not a panic move","rationale_body":null,"metadata":null,"links":{"outgoing":[{"slug":"orbit-media-website-lifespan-2y4mo-vs-6y4mo","title":"Orbit Media: average website lifespan across Inc 5000 is 2y4mo; under continuous care, 6y4mo","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"depends-on"},{"slug":"longevity-named-examples-2026","title":"Long-lived sites worth studying: Daring Fireball, Berkshire Hathaway, Craigslist, Pinboard, GOV.UK, Stack Overflow, Wikipedia","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"depends-on"},{"slug":"ten-year-cost-model-rebuild-vs-foundation","title":"Reference framework: 10-year cost model — rebuild-every-3-years vs foundation-first (Canadian SMB, CAD)","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"depends-on"},{"slug":"decay-vs-compound-matrix","title":"Reference framework: which website dimensions decay vs compound over 10 years (12-dimension matrix)","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"depends-on"},{"slug":"sej-892-migrations-523-day-recovery","title":"Search Engine Journal (Jan 2025): 523-day average recovery from domain migration (n=892); 17% never recover by 1,000 days","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"depends-on"}],"incoming":[{"slug":"research-brief-built-to-last","title":"Research brief: Built to Last — why most SMB sites rebuild every 3-4 years (piece 5 of 15)","kind":"reference","scope":"business","link_type":"relates-to"}]},"created_at":"2026-05-22T19:58:12.891Z","updated_at":"2026-05-22T19:58:12.891Z"}