Now, as all of the eCommerce community knows, Adobe will be revoking support for Magento 2.3.x soon as it aims to bring its clientele and user base onto the improved 2.4.x release.
With Codilar being a top-rated Magento partner, naturally, there was a lot of demand from businesses looking for a seamless transition from Magento 2.3.x to 2.4.x. One such client was Dubai based Marina Homegroup. They were having some performance issues and also wanted to transfer to an AWS server.
Of course, we at Codilar are always up for taking on new challenges and this time was no different.
Our team of Architects, Developers, Business Analysts, and Project Managers got together and started making the plan for the upgrade and how to go about it.
Here is our step-by-step implementation guide for our 6-week migration strategy:
Get a checkup on your extensions.
Migrating your Magento store is similar to shifting your offline store to a newer location. In that, you would check for road connectivity, electricals/water, parking, and other such amenities.
Your Magento extensions should be viewed as amenities for your digital store as, without them, your customers will not get the desired experience.
Our team went through the list of all the Third-Party Extensions and modules to ensure that there was listed support for each of these extensions and were compatible with the latest Magento 2.4.3 version.
Ninja Tip: Take a backup → Start in a sandbox environment on your local server → Use composer to update modules to vendor directory from App/Code folder → Create new module for customising extensions → Deploy to root module.
Stack up your framework.
An often overlooked step by people is upgrading from PHP 7.3 to 7.4. Think of PHP as a communication device between your eCommerce store and the servers.
For example, if you have gotten a new 5G phone, it just makes more sense to get a 5G network to fully utilize the speed and performance of your new device. It is not that a 4G network will not work with a 5G phone, it is just a recommended best practice to make the most of the situation.
So when Marina Homes came to us for the Magento migration, our Full-Stack experience made sure that their PHP version was also upgraded to 7.4 and hence living up to our Complete Commerce solution motto.
Label your boxes
Okay, now you have shifted your new store but the boxes were not labeled properly during shifting and the scanners are not picking up your barcodes. Sounds like a nightmare right? But thankfully when you use best practices, that is not going to happen.
Our client, Marina Homes, was using the AI-based search tool Klevu and it was running on MySQL Search Engine. We took up the role of product management and decided to switch to the faster and smarter Elastic-Search 7.x and configured the search module on a different instance for the best speed and performance.
It is equivalent to having more salesmen in your store so that the customer gets exactly what they are looking for quickly, leading to a greater shopping experience.
Of course, it was not as simple as we had to make multiple modifications for functionalities like sorting, filtering and recommendations to work perfectly on the listing pages.
Touch up the paint
You are eagerly anticipating the opening of your store, but then you realize something. The paintwork is kind of patchy and is not matching the structure of your new store and now the launch is delayed. Something like this can happen if you do not verify the version support of your Magento 2.4.x themes.
Magento themes play a crucial role in the aesthetics and User Experience of your online store and therefore it must be checked that the themes you are presently using have also been supported and maintained for the latest versions.
Have a Pre-Launch inspection
Everything is set for the big day and you arrive on the first day and see that your new wooden flooring has caught termites. Now we know how annoying bugs can be and no one hates bugs more than our development team. No pun intended.
To ensure that everything is smooth and running as it should, it is always recommended to do a dry run in multiple environments to debug and solve any issue before catching it too late. Our QAs have a time-tested approach and UAT methodology to make sure nothing leaves our sight and no error is unnoticed.
Enjoy your revamped store
When you hire the best, you get the best results. Your customers love it, and it makes sure that your upgrade is an investment to reap the rewards of a world-class store and not just an overhead cost.
We hope you got an understanding of our migration strategy and how you should plan for it. But we also understand that each project is different and treat it with the exclusivity it deserves as all problems need to be looked at and solved differently.
If you want to upgrade your Magento 2 store to the most recent Magento 2.4.x version, connect Codilar which offers Magento Migration services with the latest security updates and advantage of new features and performance improvements
To help with your migration needs and queries, we are always available at hello@www.codilar.com
