How To Get Things Right With Magento 1.8 - Upgradation Guide

Ecommerce companies today, are in the busiest of all times. Considering the holiday season, online companies would think of revamping their systems and services through up gradation. Magento 1.8 is finally here and most of the Magento stores would like to upgrade their sites to Magento 1.8.

Magento 1.8 Community Edition is the latest and promising contribution from Magento Developers’ Community. Magento 1.8 download empowers Magento merchants to operate their online businesses more easily and efficiently.

Pre-Upgrade Tasks

Before you start off with Magento Community Edition 1.8, make sure you are done with the following:

Always Research

There is abundant information about Magento over the internet. Check out what’s special about upgrading your specific version of Magento, or whether you need to upgrade it or not, so as to avoid any issues in future.

Maintain a Back up

Before you install Magento CE 1.8, it is important that you copy all your files and database to new location so that you don’t lose them during the up gradation.

Disabling Cache

Disable cache from admin; delete cache and session directories.

Getting Started With Magento 1.8

However the standard procedure to upgrade your Magento to the newest version, Magento CE 1.8 is as follow as:

Go to Magento Connect

Go to Magento Connect from your Magento admin and get the latest Magento Community Edition 1.8.

Magento 1.8 download

You can either create a new system to install Magento 1.8 CE or install it into an empty root directory on the same server.

Adhere to Magento guidelines

While installing Magento 1.8 CE make sure you are not using custom triggers but the MySQL database triggers that Magento 1.8 is already using to improve database access. Otherwise you can come across technical problems. So familiarize yourself with MySQL limitations but it does not support MySQL if you are using MySQL database replication. Use only row based application and review MySQL recommendations for security password.

Upgrade Assets on Magento File System

Locate the Magento CE 1.8 installation archive in the directory where you wish to install this new version. After that you will extract the archive and overwrite customizations, themes and extensions.

Upgrade the Database with Magento 1.8 CE

You need to import the production database data into the development database instance, and in the development database instance, change the values of the paths.

Update the Base URL

You can now update the secure and unsecure URLs of your web stores and store views in the Magento database by using SQL commands.

Completing the Magento 1.8 Upgrade

In order to complete the Magento 1.8 CE upgrade, go to Magento base URL in the web browser. The server-side scripts will run to update the database. The installation time depends on the amount of data in stored in your database.

However those ecommerce experts upgrading from a version earlier than CE 1.4 are strongly recommended by Magento to follow the two-step upgrade approach discussed on the following link

Moreover, one should expect more downtime for the production system and the upgrade and testing process to be time consuming.

Why should I consider upgrading to magento 1.8?

It has been over a year since Magento’s previous version came out but now Magento 1.8 Community Edition has been released. Magento 1.8 release date was September 25, 2013. Following points may reflect upon benefits of upgrading your Magento stores in the New Year to the newest version:

• Magento 1.8 CE is faster and less resource hungry.
• It delivers significant tax calculation updates, functional improvements and security enhancements.
• The best part is that you can move forward in little steps, rather than falling behind and having a major upgrade problem all at once.