Magento 2.3 Release: Security, Innovations, Performance

The world of technology, website development included, is ever-changing and thus it is important to keep up with what the change brings. Time to find out what is new and can bring great benefits (faster, better, stronger) to your eCommerce store, as well as what you need to be aware of (version conflicts, rollback limitations, etc.)

Magento 2.3 Overview

Magento’s 2.3 upgrade brings performance, security and innovation with the introduction of Two Factor Authentication, Google reCAPTCHA built-in service, PHP 7.2 support, Asynchronous API’s, Inventory Management, Elastic Search, GraphQL and PWA studio.

On the other hand, all these new features bring version conflicts. Depreciations might impact 3rd party extension/custom functionality support, and the lack of an easy rollback option means that the upgrade will require a considerable amount of effort and thorough testing before committing it for release to the production environment.

Why upgrade to Magento 2.3?

Security of Magento 2.3

The release contains substantial security enhancements (over 30 security fixes to core Magento code). More details regarding each security fix can be found here.

In order to protect the Admin Panel account access, a Two Factor Authentication feature is now available, that prohibits logging in until it is verified via SMS, Phone call, Access Token, or One Touch. Supports — Google Authenticator, Duo Security, Authy, U2F Devices (Yubikey and others).

To prevent accidental or forbidden cache management changes that may impact website performance, a fine-grained admin control has been added, through which view and delete access can be assigned to Admin Panel accounts.

There’s also a built-in Google reCAPTCHA service that can be used on admin, user login, registration, contact form and forgot password. This will help avoid malicious and spam activities on your website.

Magento 2.3 Performance

The update aimed not only to increase the performance level but also lessen the burden on the server, thus delivering resources faster.

Magento 2.3 supports the latest version of PHP 7.2 meaning higher security, better performance and new development features.

Request processing has been made significantly faster using Asynchronous API’s, thus reducing waiting time of response to requests made by clients.

A Message Queue is now available on Magento Open Source. It enables asynchronous communication between systems, enhancing the performance of your Magento store.

Previously, in order to make database table changes, developers had to write a series of scripts. With 2.3 they can now create, update and delete tables directly via XML.

ElasticSearch support is now available for Magento Open Source. It improves site search capabilities by allowing faceted search — filtering by attributes.

Innovations with Magento 2.3

GraphQL has been added as an alternative API in addition to REST and SOAP for custom frontend development, including headless storefronts and Progressive Web Applications (PWA).

To power-up the experience of developers, PWA studio has been added into Magento 2.3. Progressive Web Applications are such apps that built to take advantage of modern technology features that “progressively” scales back on devices who lack them. With the help of PWA Studio, your developers can create reliable, fast, and engaging apps on the Magento platform that will run in offline mode, support data caching, and increase your conversion rates.

Magento 2.3 Inventory Management

With Magento 2.3. Inventory Management is available for merchants that allows managing inventory for all product types in a single warehouse and across complex shipping networks. Up until now, Magento managed a single inventory system and due to this it’s really hard to manage multi-channel inventories from a single website, but using an MSI extension, the inventory will be managed by each channel and you can do it straight from your Admin panel.

Detailed information — https://devdocs.magento.com/guides/v2.3/inventory/

Risks to consider with Magento 2.3

Magento 2.3 Version conflicts

All the new features bring in a huge set of composer packages which lead to possible version conflicts, unexpected setup tasks and more. This means that the upgrade is far from simple and will require some effort.

In case new features are not needed and you want to avoid spending time dealing with conflict resolution, it is suggested to remove those core modules from your setup.

Magento 2.3 Rollback Limitations

Due to switch to Declarative Schemas you won’t be able to rollback easily to the old setup. For this reason it is a must to first test the upgrade on an identical copy of your production website.

Saving Products in Magento 2.3

There have been changes to products save (single quotes, Website assignment, sort order, Use Default Value). Due to these changes it is important to test product save functionality after the upgrade.

Magento 2.3 customerData changes

There have been changes in customerData that prevent duplicate AJAX calls to be made. Extensions might be reliant upon these calls and would require workarounds which could lead to new bugs and limited extension support.

Magento 2.3 Deprecated classes and interfaces

Release notes mention deprecated classes and interfaces which means that custom changes made with them need adjustments.

Magento 2.3 MySQL Search early warning signs

Magento 2.3 deprecates the MySQL as a search engine while it introduces the ElasticSearch. Although Magento has not made any changes yet, it is good keep this in mind moving forward.

Zend Framework in Magento 2.3

The Zend Framework 1 dependencies have been removed from Magento 1. Dependencies with Zend Framework need to be investigated in your own code or third party modules.

Scandiweb has the largest certified Magento developer team in the world ensuring Magento support all the way. If you’re looking to upgrade to Magento 2.3 smoothly, get in touch with us at [email protected] or check out our services here!

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Magento 2.3 Release: Security, Innovations, Performance

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