RULE: Design every Candid client site for a 10-year operational horizon. Rebuild is a choice, not a forced move.

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.

Why:

• Orbit Media data: average lifespan is 2y4mo across the Inc 5000; under continuous care, 6y4mo (Orbit Media: average website lifespan across Inc 5000 is 2y4mo; under continuous care, 6y4mo)
• 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 Long-lived sites worth studying: Daring Fireball, Berkshire Hathaway, Craigslist, Pinboard, GOV.UK, Stack Overflow, Wikipedia
• The 10-year cost model (Reference framework: 10-year cost model — rebuild-every-3-years vs foundation-first (Canadian SMB, CAD)) shows that even with retainer costs, foundation-first avoids 3× 523-day SEO recovery cycles and a 17% per-rebuild probability of never recovering
• The Reference framework: which website dimensions decay vs compound over 10 years (12-dimension matrix) documents which dimensions compound (~half) given the right architecture

How to apply:

• URL design: slugs are a 10-year decision (see RULE: Treat URL/slug design as a 10-year decision. Never let a slug change without a 301 redirect.)
• Dependency minimum: fewer plugins, fewer themes, fewer build-time dependencies
• Content separated from presentation (Markdown / Postgres / headless CMS — not page-builder JSON blobs)
• Continuous maintenance retainer is part of the engagement, not a separate sale; quarterly content refresh discipline pays for itself via HubSpot (Pamela Vaughan): historical-optimization refresh of old posts lifts organic traffic by avg 106%
• 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