It's no doubt to say that there are a lot of reasons to migrate Magento 1 to Magento 2, especially when Magento has released the latest amazing version - Magento 2.2.4. Compared to Magento 1, Magento 2 definitely brings about both better design and performance.If we come back to a few years ago, not many people dare to upgrade to Magento 2 owing to its instability. There are plenty of bugs in the very first version of Magento 2. But now, there is a different story when Magento seems to put all of its effort to innovate, improve and enhance Magento 2 functionality.
Besides, you should consider moving from Magento 1 to Magento 2 as soon as possible since Magento might stop providing support for its "first child" in the near future. Find more information here.
Apart from that, Magento 2 migration is a complicated process that requires your time, money and effort. For Magento developers, they probably know how complicated it is; therefore this blog post is not for them but Magento store owners, who are going to migrate Magento 1 to Magento 2. In other words, in today post, we will show Magento merchants how to conduct Magento migration smoothly, step-by-step and in the optimal period of time.
Important Things To Know Before Magento 2 Migration
Many people think that the process of migrating Magento 1 to Magento 2 is similar to updating to the latest version of Magento 1.
However, it's absolutely wrong!
To be more specific, Magento migration means you will have to build a new website on Magento 2 from the scratch but migrate data from the old site.
You can't continue using your current Magento 1 themes, extensions and code. We will go into details in the next parts. Now, let's go deep into the Magento 2 migration process!
30 DAYS TO MIGRATE MAGENTO 1 TO MAGENTO 2...
From our experience, it would take 4-5 weeks (approximately 30 working days) for completing the Magento migration process on average. However, if your site requires a lot of custom functions and theme customization with a huge amount of data to migrate, the time for the upgrade would be greater. Let's see what would be involved in the migration:
7 Days: Review the old site and prepare for the upcoming migration <Preparation>
2 Days: Set up and configure the new site <Configuration>
3 Days: Test, fix bugs and go live! <Testing>
1. Preparation
Before starting your Magento migration process, please take a look at existing Magento 1 store and decide which are your "truly needs" and needs moving to the new site. For instance, although your website might contain a huge database asset, what you need to migrate include products, categories, customers, and orders. Also, in terms of the extensions, just keep what you think is necessary and remove the redundant ones.
After that, it's highly recommended to make a thorough backup for your Magento 1 website, keeping all of the files, folders, and the database to handle the bad situations.
Furthermore, we suggest you use the same hosting server for both of your Magento 1 and 2 stores (optional).
2. Theme Migration
As we have mentioned before, it is impossible to move the theme and templates from Magento 1 to Magento 2 new site. There are several solutions for that:
- 1st solution: Buying a ready-made theme for Magento 2 to apply for your new website. There are hundreds of available attractive designs for you to choose on the Magento marketplace or well-known theme markets like Themeforest, TemplateMonster, VenusTheme,...
Pros: You will have a lot of choices for your new website design, save your time for theme design and coding as well as save your budget significantly. While it costs you from $100-200 to get a well-designed Magento 2 responsive theme, you have to pay up to ten times of that to get a unique design for your store.
Cons: Other Magento e-commerce stores can also buy the theme and have the same storefront appearance with yours. To handle this issue, you might customize the theme to match your brand image. The cost for theme customization will depend greatly on which extent you want to customize and which Magento developer/ designer you cooperate with.
- 2nd solution: Finding and utilizing a Magento 2 theme for free download. In the last blog post, we have made a list of 100+ useful free Magento responsive theme and templates that you should take a look for reference.
Pros: The obvious advantage of this solution is that you have to invest $0.00 to achieve the new look.
Cons: Compared to the first solution, the number of Magento themes to be chosen is just a quarter or even much less. Moreover, there is no guarantee for the quality of those free themes and templates. Most of their functions are very limited. Therefore, you should check it carefully before applying to the new site.
- 3rd solution: Creating a new website design from the scratch. For this option, you can hire either a Magento agency or just a website designer having experience in Magento to make a design as your requirements.
Pros: Acquiring a unique website design that fulfills all of your needs and requirements.
Cons: You have to invest a lot of money to deploy this solution. Also, it can take 1-2 months to complete the design both on the PSD and frontend programming.
- 4th solution: Cloning your Magento 1 store. If you still keep the store design (under PSD file), you can consider cloning it create the same look for your Magento 2 store.
Pros: Maintaining the current Magento website design that is familiar with all of your shoppers.
Cons: The time for website clone depends on how complex your current design is. However, cloning a website, in general, will also take a noticeable amount of time (at least 1 month on average). Additionally, what you can get finally is a design that is similar (70-80%) to the old one but not the same (100%).
- 5th solution: Cloning any website that you are interested in and creating the similar look for your new Magento 2 website.
Pros: Creating a new Magento 2 website design that is similar to your favorite one and also bringing the freshness to your buyers.
Cons: Like the 4th solution, this method will take your time and cost.
What is the best solution for Magento theme migration?
In spite of introducing many solutions for you to tackling the Magento theme migration issue, we just highly recommend the 1st solution. Overall, utilizing a ready-made Magento 2 theme will take the least amount of time (for seeking the proper theme), money (for possessing the theme) and effort (for installing and customizing it). Most of our customers now are going for this option.
Besides, the total time for deploying the theme on your new Magento 2 website (including installation, configuration, and minor customization) would be from 4-5 days on average.
3. Data Migration
Magento data migration is the process of transferring all of your data including products, categories, customers, orders, testimonials, reviews,… to the new Magento 2 site. It is true to say that this is the most pivotal stage in the Magento 2 upgrade process, asking you to have strong knowledge and experience to conduct the migration. Otherwise, a small mistake can lead to serious data loss without recovery.
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