Magento is one of the most popular eCommerce platform as number proves it. If you have your live magento 1.x based web store live and planning to upgrade it to version 2.x, you must know the complexity involving in it. That’s why Magento called it magento migration process in place of an upgraddation.

As William Pollard points,“Without change there is no innovation, creativity, or incentive for improvement. Those who initiate change will have a better opportunity to manage the change that is inevitable”.

So, being leader in the industry as above diagram on March 2016 shows, magento has taken up the term ‘change’ by heart and they have brought in drastic structural and technical changes full of latest technologies to make life easier of millions of store owners.

What has changed in version 2.x?

– The database schema has been changed drastically and now you can not simply upgrade it. You have to export, migrate or translated the data to the new structure of DB column and tables or you have to discard it.

– Root Folder Structure has completely changed.

– Theme Folder Structure has changed drastically, you can not migrate your front end theme as it was in magento 1.x. Huge changes have been applied to imrpove the performance of the theme like base package ‘app/design/frontend/base/’ will no more exists and looks like ‘app/design/frontend/vendor_name/theme_name’. So, you have to hire Magento developer for migration

– Extensions used in magneto version 1.x can’t be migrated to version 2.x. You need to approach either your extension provided or need to write yourself.

Are there some migration tools?

Yes, magento has released some official version of Magneto migration tools. Since the internal folder structure, directory structure and structure of themes and templates have changed significantly, you need to get in touch with Magento Developer to rewrite the modules.

Are you ready for migration process?

Before planning to migrate your magento website to version 2.x you need to asses if you really need it and you understand the complexity involved in the process. Make sure you have taken the back-up of everything and have taken IT Company or software expert’s advice.

Go through the detailed Migration Documentation to check if your server has all the needed tools and if not how to get them. Most of your extensions and front end template will not work after migration, make sure you have strategy in place. Ask the question, Do you have enough technical skills to do custom coding or do you need to hire magento developers?

So, the process seems to be bit lengthy and cumbersome but it is worth going through it if you love the innovation, change and performance. This migration of Magento version 1.x to magento version 2.x has totally refreshed the magento and has taken it way ahead of it peers.