1. Intro
Magento came into existence in 2007 and was made available for the audience.
Magento at the time of its inception was unique in so many ways, it was
different from other platforms available at that time. Magento was more
accessible, had wide range of capabilities that no other platform offered
and provided ease of use to the users.
The first version of Magento went famous quickly due to the wide range of
innovative technologies it offered to the users. It was appreciated by the businesses
due to its simplicity and wide range of customization it offered. Magento created the
basis for solving large and small requests to increase sales.
Magento paced towards popularity and it became the most popular CMS system
available in the market by year 2010. Magento has retained its position of
a market leader and is still the market leader till date. Magento helped
business grow at the pace they never anticipated because of its scalability,
performance and ability to hold wide range of customization.
As the time passed, trends in the market changed significantly and Magento 2
was launched in year 2015. Magento 2 has variety of features that were lacking
in Magento 1.
Magento 2 helped reach businesses reach the goals of modern sales market.
Magento 1 and Magento 2 has no comparison. It’s like comparing an older
version of a mobile phone to the latest version, two devices that are
different in so many ways.
2. Difference between Magento 1 vs Magento 2
Magento 1 and Magento 2 are completely different when discussing Admin and
programming features but have similar set of features and functions.
Magento 2 retained some of the old functions that includes, functions for
updating and improving, internet marketing and expanding them.
On the other, both these platforms are different in other aspects.
Extensions and plugins and development in Magento 1 is completely different
to Magento 2. Extensions, plugins and Development for Magento 2 won’t fit in
Magento 1 and vice versa.
But the fact is, both Magento 1 and Magento 2 are radically different from each other.
We need to have the insights to understand it properly. So, let’s consider a few aspects.
Developer Support:
One of the most critical point to consider a CMS system for a project is
Developer support. Because there need to be a team for the systematic
updates, provide assistance in the working of development, improve
performance indicators and work on bugs.
Developer support for Magento 1 will officially end in year 2020 which
means Magento 1 will go obsolete within a year.
Open Source:
Both of the versions Magento 1 and Magento 2 are open source and provides
access to users to intervene the system. It provides user with the access to
basic functions and making changes to it. Magento 1 is comparatively slow in
development process than Magento 2.
Another disadvantage that Magento 1 has is, the error information doesn’t
fall into the search engine index and the user has to create an account in
the registry and look for the error information which makes it highly complex
for the user to fix the particular issue.
In contrast, Magento 2 provides ease to its users. In Magento 2 the user
can report a problem with ease, receive the feedback very quickly and find
the information required, Magento 2 uses open GitHub platform for this
purpose.
Online Marketing System:
Magento 2 is considered one of the best e-commerce development platform
due to its wide range of default functionalities. Magento 2 has wide range
of tools for e-commerce.
Some of the default Magento 2 tools include:
- Brand Promotion.
- User Feedback.
- SEO.
- Making an attractive offer by creating attractive base of goods and demand.
Default Testing tools for Developers:
There are built-in test systems available in Magento 2:
- Unit Tests (Unit Test is used for testing a single component in isolation from external logic).
- Web API Functional Test (It is used to evaluate the performance of API with the support of SOAP and REST).
- Functional Test (It is used for the assessment of the website by end-user).
- JavaScript Test (It is used for the evaluation of JS components on the framework).
- Integration Test (Its used to evaluate the operation of files and the logic of constructing functions in the Magento environment.
- Static Test (It is used to evaluate the code without executing it).
Improved JavaScript Performance:
Magento 2 provides JS feature. With the addition of JS in the system Magento 2 has
a key improvement in UX. It provides ease to the user because the user doesn’t
require the creation of unorthodox and complex solutions for the correct display
of JS on the website.
This particular feature is of critical importance to both the parties i.e. developers and site owners. JS implementation saves a lot of time and costs eventually.
PHP 7 Support:
Magento 1 was created based on PHP 5.2 and is limited to PHP 5.3 and PHP
5.4 which means that it’s not compatible with the latest PHP versions and
has limited features. As we know, PHP 5.2 is becoming limited every year
and soon a time will come it will be outdated and won’t support advanced
features.
Magento 2 on the other hand is advanced as it was built on PHP 5.5 it supports the
later versions of PHP i.e. PHP 5.7 and PHP 7 and HHVM. Due to these modern and up to
date languages Magento 2 offers unique architecture.
Magento 1 is based on older version which eventually means long code that
creates a lot of confusions for the user and chances of error increases.
Due to latest PHP versions being used it adds numerous useful features to
Magento 2, Some of which are:
- The ability to check and analyze the system for operability after changes.
- Git (Gives the possibility of assistance for developers’ community).
- If a user wants to add style, the user can just use the registry file CSS-styles.
- It provides high level of user convenience by creating complex interactive interfaces.
- Simplifies the styling of themes, the design of components, modules.
3. CONCLUSION
Considering all of the aspects discussed in the article we can easily
conclude that Magento 2 is beneficial and more productive platform in terms
of performance, scalability, SEO features and user interface. Magento 2
provides wide range of features and advanced functionalities, the user can
get assistance from developers’ community any time with swift response.
Magento 2 is more secure and helps businesses achieve market sales
goals more efficiently.
On the other hand Magento 1 will be out dated soon next year, It is never
a wise idea to build your site on an outdated version and then spending
money to migrate it to the newer version.
Moreover, sites that already exist on Magento 1 will have to migrate to Magento 2
because sooner Magento 1 won’t cater their business needs due to limited
functionality.