Using a Magento Upgrade Service
Magento is one of the most powerful, open-source ecommerce platforms in the world. Keep your version of Magento up-to-date by upgrading as new versions are released. This assures that you have the latest Magento features. And it protects you from security vulnerabilities and provides important bug fixes.
While you may be able to upgrade Magento on your own, a Magento upgrade service will get the job done quickly and easily. The real difficulty of upgrading involves maintaining working plug-ins and themes. Things often break during upgrades. Older plug-ins may not be compatible with the new version.
Backing up your database and making a copy of the folder with your Magento software in it is the first step. That way you have a full backup you can revert to. Next make sure your server can handle the Magento upgrade. The latest Magento version is 2.x. The hosting requirement for it is PHP version 5.4 or greater. For MySQL, version 5.6 or greater is needed.
Install the latest version of Magento once your backup is in place. Install Magento in a separate folder from your current Magento installation. Use your old database when asked for database settings. This will upgrade the database structure to work with the newer version of Magento. This advanced process can take anywhere from a few minutes to several hours. The length of time depends on how much information needs to be upgraded.
The last part of upgrading Magento is to moving all of your old content over to the new Magento installation. Move the following items: Magento extensions, the Magento theme, all media and the encryption key. While this may sound simple there are many complexities that occur along the way. A Magento upgrade service will know how to handle these issues. Whereas it may take even the seasoned developer hours to solve that same problem.
If you run into problems or just want someone else to do the upgrade for you, call a Magento Upgrade Service like Brian Wade and Cybersolutions, LLC to handle the Magento upgrade at a reasonable price.
