Ten Years, Zero Rewrites: Evolving an Online Language Learning Platform

Context#

1to1Progress is ten years of trust. This language learning platform — online one-on-one lessons, video conferencing tools, dedicated spaces for learners, trainers, training managers, and administrators — was entirely built and maintained by Wixiweb. The client made a deliberate choice never to build an in-house technical team, and to hand us full ownership of their stack. It’s a rare kind of relationship, one that comes with as much responsibility as it does freedom.

In 2021, 1to1Progress merged with 7Speaking, opening a new chapter for the project — and for my role within it.

Tech Stack#

The stack tells the story of ten years of progressive legacy evolution: Zend Framework 1 and PHP 5 at the start, with jQuery, custom CSS, and an SVN repository. Rather than pushing for a full rewrite — expensive, risky, and hard to justify from a business standpoint — we chose a step-by-step modernisation: introducing Composer, migrating from SVN to Git, adopting Gulp, then Sass. From 2022 onwards, new application components were built with Webpack, Vue.js, and Tailwind CSS. The platform currently runs on PHP 7.4 — the migration to PHP 8 never got the client’s green light, caught between budget constraints and priorities absorbed by the 7Speaking merger. Less glamorous than a full rewrite, but it kept the client moving forward without service interruption or a blown budget.

My Role#

Early days#

This was the first project I worked on after joining Wixiweb — as a regular developer in a team of four. My manager handled the project, I worked through tasks independently. A classic start.

Growing into responsibility#

From 2016, I naturally stepped into the lead developer role. Wixiweb had grown — five or six people at that point — and my manager, between business support and managing other clients, had less and less bandwidth for this project. I started joining client meetings, getting closer to the product roadmap, and handling support requests directly. By 2019, day-to-day project management had fully shifted to me: writing technical specs, prioritising requests, organising tasks.

The 7Speaking merger#

In 2021, the merger with 7Speaking changed the picture. The shared goal was to consolidate both platforms’ features into a React SPA built by the 7Speaking team. To get there, we built a full dedicated API and an OAuth2 authentication layer — a project I owned end-to-end: specification, scoping, development.

I joined 7Speaking’s org chart as the technical representative for 1to1Progress, with weekly planning meetings and twice-weekly standups, all in English. Far from being a challenge, it was an opportunity: I read and listen to English every day, but the one thing missing from my toolkit was speaking it — and that bloody French accent. Doing it in a rigorous professional setting was exactly what I needed to finally close that gap.

Leading and mentoring a junior developer#

Around the same time, Wixiweb hired a junior developer, and I became responsible for him on this project.

I handled his onboarding and trained him on a codebase with ten years of history. I also managed his planning and workload. For the first four to five months, I worked closely with him through pair programming and code reviews, until he could work on his own. From then on, I trusted him fully.

He worked with me on the project for two years, then took on responsibilities on other projects, this time fully autonomous. Seeing him reach that point is one of the things I’m proudest of on this project.

Retrospective#

This project was with me for almost my entire career at Wixiweb, and I consider it a genuine personal success — not just a technical one. What matters is that everything we built was actually useful: to learners booking their lessons, to trainers managing their schedules, to 1to1Progress staff whose internal workflows genuinely improved. Having access to that kind of feedback — a learner who finally finds the tool straightforward, a training manager who saves time — that’s what makes this job meaningful to me. So is watching a junior developer I onboarded grow into full autonomy, and earn responsibilities of his own on other projects.

In 2026, 7Speaking completed the migration of all features into their own application. The 1to1Progress project was retired — a logical conclusion after the merger, almost inevitable. But not a sad ending. Ten years of useful work is a good run.

I grew with this project. And I’m proud of what we made.