Migrate Your Store from Magento 1 to Magento 2 Without Inviting Glitches

by Manish Jain Managing Director

It’s time to say goodbye to Magento 1 and migrate your store to Magento 2 so that everything works fine. Learn how to do it.

After the major announcement of the end of support for Magento 1 next year, business houses have already started an all-important shift process. If you are still unaware of the fact and confused on how to get started, then this read will take you through the fundamentals you need to consider while migration and how it’s done so that you don’t break anything during the process and everything works normally as earlier.

The Head of Product Management at Magento, Paul Boisvert verified the information by stating that the Magento 1 support will end exactly from November 18th, 2018. This means all the store owners have a year to do the needful for their stores to run smoothly. Many have already pressed the pedal while others are looking for optimum solution provider or probably a potent Magento development company to assist them.

Clearing all your doubts and queries, here’s a read that would not only help you get started but will cover different aspects and procedures of the migration process. Keep reading.

Facets requiring attention ahead of migration process

It is essential to cover the basics first and back up the work done in the past before you indulge in the process of migration. Here is a checklist that needs to be taken care of before anything else.

• Backup your existing store (Files, folders, database and everything)

• Create a clone of your store

• Perform further steps on the cloned store and not on the live store

• Check for theme and extension compatibility with Magento 2

• Transfer the data from cloned database

• Analyze for outdated data like log files, compared products and more

• Perform the cleaning process and remove the unnecessary files

It is advisable to install Magento 2 on the same hosting server where you had Magento 1 installed if you don’t want to complicate things.

Steps to migration

There are basically four steps when you migrate from Magento 1 to Magento 2, which are described in the following sections.

1.Migrating your theme to Magento 2

The introduction of Magento 2 means everything will be new, fresh and modern including the methodologies and technologies that can grant exceptional shopping experience to the end users. So, you, as a Magento developer have the advantage of making most of the situation by creating new themes for Magento 2 or by modifying the existing theme to match the new standards.

Let me clear one thing that you can’t simply migrate your Magento 1 theme to Magento2. Yes, you read that right. You need to develop a new theme for Magento 2 and make it compatible with the new set of rules and standards of Magento 2 for enhanced user experience. To make this happen, you can either hire a Magento developer or get associated with a Magento app development agency for customized

2.Migrating the extension library

Extensions are vital components of an e-commerce store that extend the functionalities of the store as per the requirements. New features can be added to your Magento store via extensions with little alteration in the coding. Being the owner of the Magento 1 e-commerce store, you’d like your extension library to work in the same manner on the Magento 2 too. But, sorry to say that they won’t work. Magento 1 extensions will not work on Magento 2.

You need to figure out the most important and the most relevant ones from the previous version and install them separately for your Magento 2 store. Although the Magento developers are working on porting Magento 1 extensions to Magento 2, the outcomes are not very pleasant.

Also Read: Top 10 Reasons Why You Should Choose Magento as your eCommerce platform

3.Migrating the customized code

Next thing you’d need to do is the migration of your customized code from Magento 1 to Magento 2. In the majority of the cases, this can be done easily via Magento’s Code Migration Toolkit, but due to structured differences in both the platforms you need to be more cautious than ever, ensuring the code integrates successfully with the Magento 2 store.

For a detailed procedure on how to get this done, you can check out this code migration GitHub repository.

4. Migrating the data

The last you need to do is migrate all your data from Magento 1 store to Magento 2 store and assisting you on this parameter is the Magento’s Data Migration Tool. The tool is effective and helps you transfer data related to products, orders, categories, backend settings and more in a flash. However, there are certain steps which are to be followed for successful data transfer. Here are the same,

Installing Data Migration Tool on Magento 2 store- The important thing to consider here is that the version of both, Data Migration Tool and your Magento framework should be same. For instance, if you are using Magento v2.2 then the tool should slate the same v2.2. Or to keep in simple words, the latest version of one should complement the other.
Configuring the tool- Once the tool is successfully installed, it’s time to configure it before you start migrating the data.
Migrating the settings- After that, you need to initiate the migration of settings that include shipping, payment, tax settings and more.
Migrating the data- Once all the things mentioned above are completed, you are ready to migrate the data. From then on, Data Migration Tool takes care of the proceedings and seamlessly transfers the entire data to the new Magento 2 store. After successful migration, you’ll get a confirmation message while in the case of failure, you can head towards Troubleshooting page of the tool for resolution of errors.

Closure

The process is not fully automated and a lot of manual effort is required. It is recommended to hire a Magento developer for the same or seek guidance from a reputed Magento development company for the process to run smoothly. It is also advised to cross-check if all the features run in the desired fashion and the store functions as intended. If not, ask your developer to identify and rectify the bugs and get the product ready for smooth functioning.

Also Read: How Much Does a Magento Website Development Cost?