This week we caught up with Chris Ashcroft, Head of Technical Services at Datacentreplus who shares his insight into upgrading to Magento 2.
During my time working within the hosting industry and regularly chatting with clients, a question I still get asked so often is; Why should I upgrade to Magento 2?
My initial reaction is, security & support! If you want to keep your core applications safe and secure, I’d always recommend patching to the most stable release, reducing the vulnerability and improving performance.
Around 12 months ago, Magento announced they will be discontinuing support for Magento 1 after June 2020, giving you 9 months to plan, test and migrate. Whilst this may seem like a long time, in reality it isn’t when ecommerce platforms run 24/7 and time is money.
After June 2020 when Magento 1 becomes EOL (End of Life), they will no longer be providing the following functionalities:
- Documentation updates
- Security Patches
- Fixes and Support
So what are the key advantages Magento 2 has to offer?
Improved Scalability and Speed
Magento have had a long time to take care of things when building this platform, 10 years to be exact between Magento 1 and Magento 2. Their primary focus during this time was site performance.
The platform is capable of handling 10 million views per hour while with Magento 1, the number was restricted to 200 thousand.
Magento 2 decreases the page load time by 30-50%. It is also a more robust platform as it can handle 39% more orders per hour as compared to Magento 1. This means that you can interact with more customers through Magento 2.
A Search Engine’s Best Friend
Magento 2 has been constructed with a front-end design. This makes it easier for the website to be browsed on all kinds of devices such as desktop/laptop, mobile, tablet, etc. This helps your website with its SEO rank since Google algorithms place websites with mobile responsiveness higher.
Extension Updates Making Life Easier
Installing extensions in Magento 2 is much easier. Installing some basic extensions in Magento 1 could take a lot of time. In Magento 2, however, this issue has been resolved with help from HTML5, LESS, and CSS3.
Segmentation of Databases
Magento 1 offered a single database for customers, admins, and developers. A major problem with this was that it would cause serious database overload. I’ve seen time and time again, if there was a heavy load at the admin’s end, the customer would also be affected, thereby affecting user experience.
However, Magento 2 offers a split database solution. There are three categories:
- Product Data
- Checkout
- Orders
These categories will help in scaling a website’s potential by segregating the database, preventing any negative impact they might have on each other.
Admin Navigation Made Simple
Admin navigation in Magento 1 was a bit complicated that only the users, who were already adept at using complex eCommerce store interfaces were capable of operating it with efficiency.
However, in Magento 2, the admin interface has been simplified that even a newbie will find it easier to become handy with the navigation.
Planning to migrate to Magento is no mean feat, but I’ve highlighted some key components to consider when doing so below:
- What version of PHP are you running? Don’t know? Chances are, you will be running on an older version, potentially even an EOL version of PHP. It is vital that you understand what version you are using and what version you need to be on for Magento 2. Knowing this in advance will allow you to plan this in, as there may be multiple steps you need to take during this.
- Checking versions of software also applies to Apache/Nginx and MySQL (or other variants) to keep everything in line with security and compliance.
- Whilst Magento 2 provides improved database usability, you will need to consider what, if any, optimisation needs to take place.
- Are you going to be upgrading the existing platform, or building a new one and migrating your data to it? If the latter, you will need to understand what components and modules each application is using, such as PHP.
Do you want to learn how you can seemingly migrate your Magento store to Datacentreplus, feel free to contact us and we can discuss your options with you and provide further advice on Magento 2.0.
Get in touch today on 0161 464 6101 and we’d be happy to help.
