How to migrate Magento 1x to Magento 2

How migration will work for you from Magento 1x to Magento 2?  Migration to Magento 2 involves four major components: data, extensions, themes, and custom codes/designs. Particularly, we should migrate Products, Categories, Customers, Orders, Configurations, CMS pages/blocks, Websites/Stores, Media assets and other custom tables/codes if you have. We’ll follow the migration strategy so that Magento 1x doesn’t not go down when migrating to Magento2.

Why migrate to Magento2

Magento 2 offers a range of flexible tools that cover any and all of your advanced marketing, SEO and catalogue-management needs – more so than ever before. It’s safe to say that the look, content and functionality of your online business are now easier to control than ever. So, Magento 2 is much better choice than Magento 1x. Though Magento company will be supporting the older versions for limited time, you need to have a plan to migrate to its newer version to become a market leader or pioneer of sorts in your niche.

Before starting migration

When starting the migration process, you need to ask yourself the following questions:

1. Should we bring all or part of the data?
2. If just selected part, which parts? Which part of data are going to migrate? How you determain what data is going to be migrated? Based on creation date? Based on status of product, customer? Or some combination of criteria? You can migrate data of some combination od criteria, because you might have some legacy data which you don’t want to migrate into new system. Instead, it is better to archive some data at somewhere on your site.
3. If we choose to bring over data on or after a certain date, which should it be – last 3 months, last 6 months, last year? Should it be all the data?
4. Should we clean data at source or destination? Should they cleaned on Magento 1x before migration or on Magento 2 after migration?

These are not the final set of question. More questions can be arisen before migration.

What changes in Magento2

What exactly has changed from Magento1 to Magento2? Lot of changes or new tables or new columns were added to Magento 2. Few tables or columns were renamed or deleted also. So, migrating big database with featured eCommerce site is not quick task. There are many options of migration.  To have a successful migration, use the following guidelines:

Build and test Magento 2

To prepare for the migration, make sure you do all of the following:

1. Set up a Magento 2 latest version.
2. Replicate your Magento 1.x database and use this Magento 1.x data for your migration
3. Install Magento 2 on a system that meets our system requirements

Migrate theme

Themes Migration from Magento 1 to Magento 2

Magento 1 themes cannot be migrated to Magento 2 directly but we provide the following options:

1. Working with your frontend developer or designer to create a new theme for Magento 2. Use this chance to make sure your site is responsive and to follow best practices.
2. Installing our Magento 2 Theme.

Migrate extensions

Extension Migration from Magento 1 to Magento 2

Magento 1 extensions in most cases will not be compatible with Magento 2 code. Many extension providers offer updated versions of their products available for purchase or download.

Use this chance to review the list of extensions. To simplify future upgrades, install only the extensions that are required for your business.

Code Migration

Migrate code from Magento 1 to Magento 2

Custom code used by your Magento 1 store is compatible with Magento 2 in most cases. The code will require either rewriting or migrating.

Magento offers code migration tools that can help with this process. Note that due to platform differences, the migration output requires additional work to make sure it can be successfully installed in a Magento 2 store.

Learn more about the Code Migration Toolkit.

Data migration

Data migration is the process of importing legacy data, from one old systems to a new system.  In data migration section, we’ll cover the layouts migration, CMS pages and static blocks migration, and finally the migration of your products, customers, orders and custom attributes.

Data Migration from Magento 1 to Magento 2

Don’t expect any miracle – it’s not going to happen magically. You need to spend time on it. Data Migration allows you to migrate several types of data from your Magento 1 store to Magento 2 store.

Start your migration

1. Make sure that theData Migration Tool has a network access to connect to Magento 1 and Magento 2 databases. Open ports in your firewall.
2. Stop all activity in the Magento 1.x Admin Panel (except for order management, such as shipping, creating invoice, credit memos etc.)

NOTE: Activity cannot resume until your Magento 2 store goes live.

3. Stop all Magento 1.x cron jobs.
4. Use the migration tool to migrate settings and websites.
5. Copy your Magento 1.x media files to Magento 2.0. (You must copy these manually from<magento1-root>/media to <magento2-root>/pub/media)
6. Use Data Migration Tool to migrate your data from Magento 1 database to Magento 2 database. If some of your extensions have data you want to migrate, you might need to install these extensions adapted for Magento 2. In case the extensions have a different structure in Magento 2 database, use the mapping files provided with the Data Migration Tool.
7. Use the magento indexer:reindex command to reindex all indexers.
8. Thoroughly test your Magento 2.0 site.

Incremental updates

Now that you’ve migrated your data, you must incrementally capture data updates that are added in Magento 1 store (such as new orders, reviews and changes in customer profiles) and migrate it to Magento 2 store.

• Start theincremental migration; updates run continually. You can stop the updates at any time by pressing CTRL+C
• Test your Magento 2 site during this time so you can catch any issues as soon as possible. In case you find any issues, press Control+C to stop incremental migration and start it again after issues are resolved

Go Live

Now that your Magento 2 site is up-to-date with Magento 1 and is functioning normally, do the following to cut over to the new site:

1. Put your Magento 1 system in maintenance mode (DOWNTIME STARTS).
2. Press Control+C in the migration tool command window to stop incremental updates.
3. Start your Magento 2 cron jobs.
4. In your Magento 2 system, reindex the stock indexer using the command magento indexer:reindex cataloginventory_stock.
5. Using a tool of your choice, hit pages in your Magento 2 system to cache pages in advance of customers using your storefront.
6. Perform any final verification of your Magento 2 site.
7. Change DNS, load balancers, and so on to point to new production hardware (DOWNTIME ENDS)
8. Magento 2 store is ready to use. You and Your customers can resume all activities.