Modern technologies, improved back-end and front-end, better customization, higher performance, and scalability… And that is not a full list of Magento 2.0 improvements. It was expected for a while by many Magento users striving for changes. But was this anticipation worth of the efforts? Should you migrate to Magento 2.0, and if yes, how difficult or easy it might be? Let’s figure out.
Set-Up Process and Upgrades
As Magento Product Manager shares, the team was working actively to meet user complaints regarding the complexity of platform installation and upgrading. Magento 2 possesses a standalone installer which turns all installation processes much faster by proactively checking for pre-requisites before the set-up. Installation process is fairly difficult but migrating (upgrading) the old version isn’t easy at all. Store owners will be able to migrate the core data (customers, products, orders, store configurations), but themes will have to be refactored as the structure is different. Also, all 3rd party extensions have to be changed for the ones compatible with Magento 2. To be honest, migration to Magento 2 is not going to be easy, but it worth it.
Better Performance and Scalability
Basically, there are several reasons for the significantly improved scalability and performance:
- Magento now can boast having several databases for products and orders respectively. Thus, more concurrent admin users are allowed now. Thanks for the vivid core up-dates, more admin users will have the opportunity to update website without data conflicts.
- Full page cache out-of-the-box.
- Varnish and Redis support also will turn out-of-the-box.
- Improved indexers will stop blocking processes; they will work in the background.
- At last, these new indexers deliver speedier query performance and up-dates than before.
Better Codebase
There are still plenty of things to do, but Magento 2 includes some special unit tests for modules that will make them more robust and will help to define integration issues easier. They are located in module package. In addition, the changes also affected the usage of Composer. Backwards compatibility policy is now based on the server standard.
Improved Front-End Architecture
All front-end developers will be satisfied with the distinctive list of up-dates offered by Magento 2.. After migrating to a new version, you’ll notice that the latest technologies available for the front-end part. Those are CSS3, HTML5, and jQuery. General layout editing has been changed for a better too. Enjoy improvements in the structure of project directories and file set. Greater performance and scalability are not the only issues, however. Those who choose to migrate to 2.0 version will finally have RWD served out-of-the-box. In addition, you’ll notice actual resizing process for developers becoming simpler. As for the theme workflow, the skin directory was removed for user’s convenience. Everything is organized under the app structure. The layout also looks better now. First and for most, its files are divided into smaller parts. Thus, it simplifies the maintenance. It’s crucial that Magento 2.0 offers a system validation for XML files through applying XML schemas for individual and merged layout files.
Back-End Processes Also Upgraded
Magento admin panel has been made far easier for processing orders and managing products and categories. Customizing became available after Magento 2.0 release. Sorting your products by adding more columns to the grid has never been quicker. After involving a grid view in the admin panel, you can edit any information directly on the grid’s page. It works just as in Excell worksheet. Isn’t it amazing?
What about the external integration?
As expected after Magento 2.0 demo, integration with external software became more available thanks to the expanded API. New API is more efficient, making it possible to get all the data needed just in one call. That could be customer, product, order, etc.
Changes affect Data Entities with the directory API/Data. The basic difference is that when working with Magento 2 API, we can access resources via real method name instead of the call one, and provide parameters as defined in WSDL for each specific method.
Testing-Friendly Magento
This version appears to be rather testing-friendly because of the implemented Mage god class. This Magento 2.0 feature eliminates past troubles with the code testing. Also, a testing framework comes along with this version. The following tests are on the list:
- Integration Tests
- Unit Tests
- JavaScript Unit Tests
- Static Tests
- Legacy and Migration Tests
- Performance Tests
Payment Gateways Improved
- An in-line iFrame can host the 3d party payment form. A lot of customers admire this opportunity as having the credit card payment page hosted elsewhere alleviates the threat of credit card data loss. So, it leads to the increased security and confidence.
- You can also have a 3d-party hosted payment page to redirect the end-user to a page driven by another domain.
Magento 2 is closely integrated with various payment systems such as PayPal, Authorize.net, BrainTree, and others.
Incredible User Experience
Any E-commerce owner cares about user experience. Among the top advantages, you’ll find:
- A special menu system and navigation.
- Access control. Logging-in is less irritating.
- Adding a product to the cart turns far more convenient and faster. This feature saves a lot of time and nerves of your clients.
- The way how taxes are handled through the system was improved as well.
To conclude, I would highlight the essential benefits of Magento 2.0 once again. They are:
- Refreshed the technology stack.
- Simplified process of external integrations.
- Enhanced scalability and performance.
- Easy installation process.
- Accelerating upgrade procedures.
If you have any questions about anything I’ve mentioned in this blog post or anything else related to Magento, please feel free to drop me a message via this form.
