How to plan to migrate to Magento 2.0

Magento is regarded as the world's most successful eCommerce platform, powering more than 240,000 ecommerce stores on internet. Though delivering a top notch web store is never easy but Magento makes it possible to achieve the best possible results in least possible efforts. Recently, Magento has released a new version called Magento 2.0, which is more systematic and sophisticated ecommerce software than its previous versions. Magento 2.0 uses new approaches and technologies that give merchants an unmatched ability to create innovative shopping experiences and scale to new levels.

This new release of Magento 2.0 comes with new architecture and the code base. The code base has been re-written from scratch, making it par with other modern programing frameworks. You can read about what is improved in Magento 2.0 in our previous article here http://www.medma.net/knowledge-base/Migrate-to-magento-2/2-16 . Due to these major changes there are number of questions in the mind of existing Magento store owners and stakeholders about how to migrate to Magento 2.0. So, our experts have compiled a set of guidelines for you to ease the thought process:

Before attempting migration, the first thing to do is to take full backup of your old Magento store including files, database records, plugins, configurations etc. Once this is complete, migrating to new Magento 2.0 involves four components :


1. Migrating existing data

You can efficiently move all of your products, customers, orders, store configurations, promotions etc from your existing Magento 1.x webstore to new Magento 2.0 store by using official Magento data migration tool. Please note that this tool is CLI based and so you need to be little technical in order to use it. The instructions for downloading and installing this tool is available at http://devdocs.magento.com/guides/v2.0/migration/migration-tool-install.html


2. Migrating existing extensions

Magento provides pretty basic store, and so we all use various extensions to add more functionalities. But migrating your existing extensions to new Magento 2.0 store is not an easy job. As Magento's architecture has changed now so the extensions which were working in previous versions will not work in new Magento 2.0 release. Either you need to contact vendors and check if they have released that specific extension for Magento 2.0 platform or you can find a new developer and ask him to code a new extension for Magento 2.0 platform.


3. Migrating existing theme

If you are not very attached to your existing store theme then you can quickly download a new Magento 2.0 compatible theme from any marketplace like Themeforest.com. But if you want to continue using your old store design then you need to migrate it manually as per new Magento structure. Though documentation is available online at various places for creating Magento 2 themes, layouts, and doing customizations, but as Magento 2.0 is fairly new so most of the time you will be working on your own. Suggested approach would be to hire someone expert in Magento 2.0 theme development, like us :-)


4. Migrating existing code customizations

This can be the most frustrating, costly and lengthy process while migrating to Magento 2.0. Though it is strongly suggested not to mess with your core Magento code files but it is often found that many novice developer adopt this shortcut approach to quickly hack the functionality in Magento. We discourage migrating these kind of code hacks to Magento 2.0 but if it is really required, then it is better to include them as new extensions in Magento 2.0. But to worsen the problem, many time store owners are not aware of these code hacks in their Magento stores so it is always very difficult to find them and estimate them upfront before starting the migration. You need to engage someone very experienced in Magento, probably certified Magento developer, who can plan migrating code customization to Magento 2.0

Hence, these are few things which you need to keep in mind while deciding to migrate to Magento's new 2.0 release. Please feel free to send your questions and comments to us.