ergophobe - 2:54 pm on Mar 20, 2013 (gmt 0)

>>future-proof the site and reduce it's dependancy on custom code.

This will reap benefits - I am working on a site now where the original developer just took huge chunks of javascript and even PHP and pasted it into blocks and then developed custom modules with no user input filtering. It's a total mess and very hard to maintain.

>>worried about performance now

Of course Varnish (or the Boost module) will help reduce server load, but a lot of modern Drupal sites are very slow on the front end too. A couple of things to look into
- alternate aggregation schemes
- a Javascript loader (LABjs, head.js, control.js, etc).

I just recently made a site feel a lot speedier for someone with those tweaks.