Since Magento decided to withhold support for Magento 1, users have started to craft a swift integration with Magento 2. Also, the upgraded components – SEO characteristics, advanced reporting, a reward points system, a gift registry, scheduled import/exports, and other marketing tools – make it a coveted option for e-commerce businesses. However, shifting to Magento 2 can be a nightmare if proper migration techniques and experts are excluded from the procedure. With a careful upgrade plan and a Magento 2-savvy developer team, business owners can overcome the hurdle of shifting to the new version with ease. Review the top and most common challenges & issues in the Magento 2 migration process and solutions on how to overcome them.
In plain eyes, switching to Magento 2 might seem like an easy software upgrade that might take hours. However, the intrinsic website architecture, plugins, customizations, online footprint, and massive data volume turned Magento 2 migrations challenging for businesses. To understand and tackle the Magento 2 upgradations, here are four core challenges the users have faced so far and how to tackle them:
1. Data Migration
New additions to Magento 2 – the capability of handling more traffic, more extensive product catalog, Elasticsearch, and multiple store management with a single backend interface – make data migration a mammoth task of Magento migration challenges overcome.
During the migration, a newbie developer can get overwhelmed and look past data compatibility, cleanup, audit, and consistency – resulting in data loss while shifting from Magento 1. Moreover, the database schemas of Magento 1 and Magento 2 are fundamentally different, including restructured tables, optimized indexes, and new entities. This core distinction means the data cannot be directly transferred; it must be mapped and transformed to fit the new schema.
⟹How to Overcome This Issue
Before transitioning to Magento 2, the development team, project manager, and data analysts should run a detailed data audit to check all the indexes, entities, and customer logs. Upon completing the mapping of existing files, fixing existing data issues, and deleting unused categories or customization, the team should proceed with Magento 2 reassignment. Indexing serves as the core element of Magento and improves a business’s online performance on Magento 2 migration challenges overcome.
After the shift, the developers must employ a time-based scheduler to avoid getting messages like “One or more indexes are fully invalid.” Also, all the alterations should be reindexed to utilize reconstructed data on the transaction, site history, content, and category.
2. Upgrading the Themes and Customizations
E-commerce businesses utilize a plethora of themes and customizations – bolstering clientele management, mordern marketing, and transaction tracking. Thus, upgrading the plug-in architecture, custom product imports, advanced order tracking, REST API integrations with ERPs, CRMs, and inventory management systems to Magento 2 can be a big hurdle for the system administrators and developers.
Magento 2’s highly customizable platform allows developers to create unique and tailored solutions for different business needs. However, it will all go in vain if the site developers fail to reassign the existing and popular themes and customizations to Magento 2 and end up focusing more on adding new elements fixing common Magento 2 migration issues.
⟹How to Overcome This Issue
Magento 2 offers a robust API to help developers integrate with third-party applications and services more efficiently. The developers can transfer codes for custom themes and features with the code migration toolkit while using Magento 2’s blank theme as a starting point. Some custom templates of Magento 1 are non-transferrable to Magento 2. Rather than building similar plug-ins from scratch, checking the Magento 2 modules with the same functionality will take less time and money fixing common Magento 2 migration issues.
3. Losing SERP Position: Magento 2 Migration
SERP position functions as the lifeblood of many digital companies; losing the ranking means dropping thousands of potential clients daily. Switching to Magento without a robust SEO strategy leads to being de-ranked overnight – resulting in minimal web traffic and sales. The website can lose its ranking after the changeover due to URL changes, the new outlook of the store. In addition, duplicated content (HTTP and HTTPS versions). Besides, improper redirects from the old pages to the upgraded Magento 2 site and SEO localization issues have led to an unexpected downward trend at the SERP.
⟹How to Overcome This Issue: Magento 2 Migration Solutions
After the shift, the successful optimization of Magento 2 sites for search engines needs expert assistance from an SEO consultant. Website traffic is pivotal for the SERP; an SEO pro can guide the developer team about the proper migration time to prevent a “404 error” during peak business moments. The best way to avoid traffic drop through URL changes is to make SEO-friendly links with the proper implementation of 301 redirects. As a developer, you should map the 301 redirects with minute details to prevent the dreaded 404 errors.
4. Uploading the Previous Content
Uploading the content from Magento 1 to Magento 2 is a formidable task as the blog isn’t a default function. The images often stop showing after the transition, and developers use custom extensions for the content. Since visual content serves as a critical component for SEO. Web traffic and draws consumer attention. A transition to Magento 2 without the previous content (blog, image, video) can ruin the digital end of any business. Another issue many site developers face happens to be getting the “Attention. We don’t recognize or support this file extension type” notice while trying to add images to a product in Magento 2.
⟹How to Overcome This Issue Magento 2 Migration Solutions
Pre-existing settings and configurations might not transfer directly to Magento 2. Leading to broken or zero uploads of content to the new setup. Before deploying the system to Magento 2, a good developer ensures all the paths, preferences. Moreover, third-party libraries are compatible and updated according to the requirements. To prevent missing images, you should use the PHP ImageMagick (image processing) extension. The preferred version for Magento 2.2 and further. Apart from these tricks, checking directory permissions under publication or media. So, temporarily uploading the directory, and missing write permissions may help the site masters find the error.
Outro
Magento 2’s seamless shopping experience across various devices. So, upgraded site architecture, and latest tools turned it into a sought-after platform among businesses. The hurdles regarding migration are often a result of novice Magento developers starting the process. Without paying attention to the existing data, SEO strategy, and customizations. With the guidance of an experienced site developer and project manager. These problems can be easily mitigated sans damaging the e-commerce business’s existing client base, history, and unique attributes.