Migrate site from 1.4 to latest Magento 2.3+

[steverino3]

My name is Steve and I have plenty of e-commerce,sql, and development experience but modest experience in Magento 1.4. I need to migrate a production site on Windows from Community 1.4.1.1 (which I built) to the latest Magento version 2.3+ . I see some posts talking about migrating later versions but I am looking to define the whole process here.   The site has a custom theme (including css for mobile & desktop), many thousands of customers, hundreds of products and 5+ years of order and browsing history. It is quite busy every day. The site has 3rd party extensions and well separated custom code I've built myself. What is the best way of doing this upgrade?

I am thinking of the following process:

1. Install a fresh copy of the latest Magento on my dev box

2. Migrate the theme and css and test look and feel with minor sample data.

3. Migrate the extensions (assuming vendors support the latest Magento version)

4. Migrate my custom code

5. Migrate the latest data-I have no idea how to do this easily (to avoid huge amount of sql development) and would prefer a tool to do it.

6. Test dev box code.

7. Deploy data and code from dev to new production site and test. Then migrate the domain to point there.  Note that data changes in production might require a data re-migration and quick deployment.

Can you tell me what changes I should make in this process to simplify, increase reliability and reduce time to production?  Also, any good migration tool recommendations for the code or data would be very helpful.

Thanks,

Steve

[Vimal Kumar]

Hi @steverino3,

You steps looks fine to me.

But i want to suggest few points and you need to test your magento 2 website on each step.

I will suggest to data migration first after fresh setup of magento2. And test the website first with magento default behaviour. You can follow magento 2 data migration tool for data:
https://devdocs.magento.com/guides/v2.3/migration/migration-tool-install.html

Then third party extensions and migrate data on these extension.

Then custom code modules.

Then install custom theme and apply css.

For more info you can follow magento2 dev docs..
https://devdocs.magento.com/guides/v2.3/migration/migration-plan.html

I hope it will help you!

[steverino3]

Thanks for the quick and good response Vimal. I think the data migration with default behavior earlier and additional testing makes a lot of sense.

Can the migration tool at https://devdocs.magento.com/guides/v2.3/migration/migration-tool-install.html upgrade from a 1.4.1.1 database to a 2.3 db or do I need a preliminary upgrade step from 1.4.1.1 to some higher version like 1.6 or so?  i.e. Do I do the upgrade in one step or two?

Steve

[Vimal Kumar]

@steverino3 

Database structure has major changes from 1.4.1.1 to 1.4.2.

So you need to upgrade magento 1.4.1.1 to 1.4.2 first. Then you go for second step to migrate from magento 1 to magento 2. 

Database structure has major changes from 1.4.1.1 to 1.4.2 so you need to upgrade first to 1.4.2 then you can upgrade to 1.7.0.2 directly.

For more info: 
https://astrio.net/blog/magento-upgrade-guide/

For database migration from M1 to M2 you can follow below link:
https://www.vtnetzwelt.com/ecommerce-blog/magento-development-blog/magento-migration-process/

I hope it will help you!

[steverino3]

Thanks Vimal.  So steps for Magento code and db (excluding extensions and code modifications and css for upgrades)  are

1. Migrate Magento code from 1.4.1.1 to 1.4.2

2. Migrate Magento db from 1.4.1.1 to 1.4.2

2a. Test

3. Migrate Magento code from 1.4.2 to 1.7.0.2

4. Migrate Magento db from 1.4.2 to 1.7.0.2

4a. Test

5. Migrate Magento code from 1.7.0.2 to 2.3

6. Migrate Magento db from 1.7.0.2 to 2.3

6a. Test

The extensions and code modifications and css would be done after step 6a for Ver 2.3 and not for earlier versions.  Does this plan make sense?

Steve

[Vimal Kumar · Accepted solution]

@steverino3 
Yes, Plan looks fine now. 
You are right that the extensions and code modifications and css would be done after step 6a for Ver 2.3 and not for earlier versions. 

[steverino3]

One more thing I discovered,  We are on Windows now but 2.3 supports only Linux.  I would move 1.4.1.1 version to Linux first then upgrade from there.

[Vimal Kumar · Accepted solution]

Hi ,

Yes, I am agree with you. We should move 1.4 to Linux first then upgrade. In this case we will not face server related issues later.

[Vimal Kumar · Accepted solution]

Hi @steverino3,

I would like to add one more thing.

Magento 1.x will work on php 5.6 version. And magento2 latest version 2.3.1 will work on php7.2.

[steverino3]

Thanks Vimal.  That's helpful.