The time for Magento 2 migration has come. Magento 1 is fading away and Magento 2 is taking its place. Magento migration has become demand of the industry. It’s high time you move your store from Magento 1 to Magento 2. Already most of the people from the ecommerce development have starting utilizing this.

What is Magento 2 ?

Magento 2 is the latest and transformed version of ecommerce platform with a new architecture, database design and coding structure. Magento 2 was released in 2015 and was welcomed by the developers, community and agencies providing magento development services because of its user-friendly interface.

Is Magento 2 Migration necessary?

This question might have crossed your mind. So, here is the answer.

Yes. Magento 2 migration is mandatory as the magento team has officially announced that the support for version 1 will end in June 2020. Earlier the date was November 2018 but recently it has been extended to June 2020.

Considerations before Migration

Before you start migration of Magento 1 to Magento 2, there are some points to be consider.

1. Review your website and analyse what needs to be kept or removed.
2. Make sure you have full backup of your Magento 1 store, database, files and folders.
3. Migrate the data from the cloned database of Magento 1 store.
4. Analyse if your current extensions, themes and code are compatible with Magento 2.
5. After installing Magento 2, set the option “<direct_document_copy>1</direct_document_copy>” in your config.xml.

Stages to Migrate Magento 1 to Magento 2

According to the official magento documentation, migration to magento 2 comprises of the following stages.

• Theme Migration
• Extension Migration
• Customization
• Data Migration

Theme Migration

Theme is an element that gives a compatible look and feel to your entire store. It provides a better look to some or the regions like Admin and Storefront.

Magento 2 has introduced new technologies and methods for delivering improved shopping and store experience to the users and merchants as well. But you cannot migrate your Magento 1 theme directly to Magento 2. You have to create a new theme for Magento 2 and then make it responsive for the best user experience.

You can buy and install a Magento 2 theme from the Magento Marketplace or any other reputed resources in order to avoid this nuisance.

Extension Migration

Extensions are the components that extend the functionalities of your Magento store and provide new features. Installing the desired extension from Magento Marketplace is the next step in magento migration process. Only install the relevant extensions that are available and required for your store.

Don’t forget that Magento 1 extensions will not work on Magento 2 as there are severe compatibility issues which you will experience while integrating Magento 1 extensions into Magento 2.

Customization

In most of the cases, the custom code used by Magento 1 store is compatible with Magento 2. There is a Code Migration Toolkit provided by Magento that helps you in this process. There are structural differences in both the platforms. Therefore, this magento migration may require additional work to ensure that the custom code successfully integrates with the Magento 2 store.

Data Migration

Data Migration is the last step you need to perform during Magento Migration process. In this, you need to move your Magento 1 settings and data to Magento 2.

Magento has released a data migration tool to simplify the migration process. Magento Migration Tool (MMT) helps the developers to migrate the store data from Magento 1.x version to Magento 2.x version. In order to install Data Migration Tool, you have to make sure that the version of Magento 2 store and data migration tool match.

Closure

Once you are successfully done with the migration process, don’t forget to test the Magento 2 store to make sure that everything works properly. It is not an easy task as it require lots of manual work.

If you like an experienced developer to make sure your Magento 2 migration goes smoothly, then you may hire the experts or go with professional Magento migration service.