Magento upgrade: The importance and how to implement it

The Magento upgrade process is such an important move that you need to pay close attention to. Especially, when you’re making a switch from Magento 1 to Magento 2 which is very complex. Take a look at our blog post for the detailed steps on upgrading from Magento 1 to Magento 2.

The e-commerce industry is growing fast with rapid advancements and new technologies. This becomes challenging for an online business to match the pace with such competition and reach its full potential. Therefore, if you won’t make a Magento upgrade to the latest version, you’ll end up losing your target market. Besides, the Magento upgrade will help you get access to all the technological improvements that can boost your store performance and offer the best shopping experience for your customers.

Why should you implement Magento upgrade?

Still, running your Magento store on the old version? You’re seriously missing out on the amazing functionalities and advancements that can boost up your website to new heights. Here are the most important reasons to consider a Magento upgrade:

1. Magento 1 causes many inconveniences to merchants

If you still decide to stay on Magento 1 beyond the date, you may have some issues with your website management. Here is the list of disadvantages of using Magento 1:

• Security patches

After Magento 1 stops supporting and launching security patches, you can lose access to all payment gateways within 90 days. Besides, hackers will automatically get access to online websites that is still on unsupported versions of Magento, and your store function becomes broken and will not be PCI compliant.

• Quality Fixes

Magento won’t offer quality fixes anymore for Magento Open Source or certain versions of Magento Commerce, therefore you find that Magento function becomes broken from lack of maintenance. With no more functions upgrades to Magento 1 and a lack of Magento 1 modules being maintained, customers will not receive enough advantages from Magento 1 that they expect.

• Third-Party Modules

Without maintenance, modules won’t be compatible with any new patches released to the core platform. And if your extensions aren’t receiving regular security patches they will leave your website vulnerable to hackers.

• No support

There will be no official support for Magento developers and merchants after June 2020. Therefore, it’s difficult for you to have an effective solution if you meet any technical issues with your online store

 2. Latest Magento version includes more advantages

• Security

Almost every release has some security fixes in it. In most cases, a new version comes with all security patches from previous updates.

• Performance improvements

Very often, a new version comes with various performance improvements achieved by the platform code optimization.

• Functional fixes and code enhancements

Magento team works hard to optimize the platform code and if some of the functions need improvements, they add fixes.

• New feature

Some versions include new features that assign to extend the website’s functionality as well as enhance the overall customer and admin experience.

Guide to Upgrade Magento 2

1. Backup your store

Creating backups for your Magento 2 store is so important that you can protect all data from disappearance through Backup Management if there is any change or break on the website.

2. Turn on maintenance mode

You need to put your online store in maintenance mode while upgrading. To allow maintenance mode:

php bin/magento maintenance:enable

It will generate a new file var/.maintenance.flag. If you cannot disable maintenance mode, you can remove this file.

3. Upgrade to Magento 2

For example, I will implement a Magento upgrade to the Magento version 2.2.1. You can view the latest releases at Github releases

• Pull package

Utilizing the following command on terminal/command-prompt firstly:

composer require magento/product-community-edition 2.2.1 --no-update 

composer update

You may be required for a username and password.

•  Flush cache

In this step, you need to remove cache and generation. Run the below command line at the root folder:

rm -rf var/cache/* 

rm -rf var/page_cache/* 

rm -rf var/generation/*

Notes: You may install Memcached, and Redis cache…, you should flush those caches manually.

• Run Magento upgrade

Run upgrade module, database schema

php bin/magento setup:upgrade

• Run compile, reindex

You need to run compile and reindex for a better performance after upgrading.

php bin/magento setup:di:compile

php bin/magento indexer:reindex

Notes: At Ubuntu/Debian Linux, if you have permission problems, you need to insert sudo them at the beginning of every command like sudo composer update.

• Disable maintenance mode

You have turned on maintenance mode in step 2, it’s time to turn it off. Run the following command line to turn it off:

php bin/magento maintenance:disable

4. Check the current Magento 2’s version

In the next step, you can check the Magento 2’s version by running the command.

php bin/magento  --version

If the system displays the cache write permission error, you can run the following command to give write permission to pub and var directories:

chmod -R 777 pub var

Some plans for Magento upgrade

• Magento core files should not be overwritten
• Track whether all of the modules on your site are relevant, and then remove redundant ones.
• Make sure all 3rd party Magento extensions and themes should be compatible with the latest version.
• Upgrade Magento on the development website (ensure that the dev website is the exact copy of the live website).
• Check the website for any issues. Fix them.
• Double-check the development environment.
• Release the upgrade.
• Check the live website once more.

Need Magento upgrade services?

We hope our guide will help you upgrade Magento easily and everything will go smoothly and without problems. And, if you are looking for the best eCommerce developers to upgrade your website to the latest version, have come here at Magesolution. We’re a team of certified Magento developers who are ready to serve you with the best Magento Website Development service. So, if you want to upgrade to the Magento version, we encourage you to contact us today.