Magento 2.4.2: migration guide and version upgrade

eCommerce platforms have become a key component in the commercial architecture of every company, not only for trading (B2C) but also for manufacturing, production and logistics companies that use them for their B2B trading capabilities and their functions of price management, catalogue, online contract terms and others.

Given this need, Adobe Commerce has become the most widely used commerce platform in the world and is therefore considered one of the most attractive and popular platforms. That is why Magento frequently updates its platform to constantly add new features, performance improvements and system security. However, just as versions are frequently upgraded, older versions are also discontinued from Magento support.

The Adobe Commerce Support Matrix is the support and upgrade guide that every company should review to know what support dates are available so that they can avoid a security or functionality emergency. Below, you can see the Magento version guide with its support end dates:

Magento 2.4.2

In early 2021 Adobe Commerce launches its new product version, Magento Commerce and Open Source 2.4.2.

The new version of Adobe Commerce focuses on providing more opportunities for B2B and B2C shop owners. Magento 2.4.2 comes with a list of new features, bug fixes, code fixes, test cycles and security improvements.

When is the right time to upgrade my version to Magento 2.4.2?

The first factor to consider is whether support is active or not. For example, if your Adobe Commerce version is 2.2 this version was released in September 2017 and your support expired in 2019, if this is the case, it would be very good to consider applying a Adobe Commerce version upgrade.

Consider that software platforms guarantee their proper functioning at a specific date considering database versions, application server and other elements. This means that when Magento's support expires, it is possible that the support for your databases - whatever they may be - has already expired as well.

• Better purchase approvals
• Faster time to market
• Improved storefront performance
• Improved API performance
• Faster administrator response time
• Improved default search engine
• Support for remote storage solutions

The new release focuses on security updates and includes more than 280 new core code fixes. It includes the resolution of around 290 GitHub issues by community members. Let's take a look at the new features and updates provided by Magento in the Magento 2.4.2 release.

The latest release of Adobe Commerce includes numerous updates to the performance, quality and security of the Magento platform. You may need to migrate the new version of the platform to Composer 2.x. Other platform enhancements in Magento 2.4.2 include:

• Elastic search support 7.9.x.
• Enhanced support for Varnish 6.4.
• Redis 6.x support.
• Enhanced PHPUnit 9.x support.
• Introduction to PHP 7.4 support.
• MariaDB 10.4 support.

Infrastructure enhancements

The new version of Adobe Commerce can address several infrastructure challenges of an online shop. For example, it will allow shoppers to clear the entire shopping cart with a single click. It makes the shop infrastructure faster and more resilient to high loads. The new version mainly includes improvements in the core quality of the framework and the following functional areas:

• Promotions
• Cart and payment
• Over 35 security bug fixes and developments, including the following updates:
• Security developments
• Staging and preview
• Customer account
• Import and export
• Orientation
• Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) support
• Core cookies support the SameSite attribute
• Improved file system functionality
• Remote Code Execution (RCE) support
• Core Content Security Policy (CSP) violations corrected.

Most security issues require access to the shop's administration panel. Therefore, you should protect it with solutions you are familiar with, such as using a unique admin URL, a secure password, 2FS, etc.

B2B Commerce Updates

The new release of Adobe Commerce brings some long-awaited feature updates and bug fixes to the platform's B2B functionality. It introduces Magento B2B version 1.3.1, which also introduces the new feature: online payment methods for purchase orders.

It allows users to pay online from anywhere, anytime. There are many other bug fixes and enhancements for B2B e-commerce merchants, including:

• Support for customised payment details email templates.
• Supports third-party or customised payment methods.
• Maintains PCI compliance for existing payment method templates.
• Improvements to GitHub-302, GitHub-259 and GitHub-213.
• Added an option to change the payment method in the last payment step.
• Added "Approved / Pending" payment status for purchase orders.

Partner Ecosystem Enhancements

Magento 2.4.2 offers the following enhancements for vendor-developed extensions or third-party extensions:

• Magento 2.4.2 integration with bank payment methods such as Bank of Chile, Chase, Bank of America, BAC Credomatic, Banco Davivienda, Grupo Aval, Banco Nacional and other banks in Latin America and the United States.
• Amazon Pay: The new version has deprecated the option to pay via Amazon Pay.
• dotdigital: This partner's engagement cloud model now supports diagnostic alerts and Page Builder.
• Braintree: has now added support for multi-address sending.
• Vertex: has removed disused code and offers an improved administration experience and backend interface.
• Yotpo: has witnessed an improvement in the order synchronisation mechanism.
• Klarna: now uses a GraphQL module that supports PWA integrations.

Improved tools and integrations

The new version of the Adobe Commerce platform offers the following tools and integration improvements:

• AWS S3: Enhancements to Amazon Simple Storage Service (AWS S3) include support for object storage and future extensibility. It also allows media files to be stored on it.
• PWO Studio: offers improved localisation and internationalisation, multiple payment and language support, improved extensibility, etc.
• GraphQL: includes support for joins, multiple wish lists, RMA, comparison lists and more.
• Media Gallery: offers new role resource functionality to restrict access by unauthorised administrators. Merchants can also use web-optimised images in content.
• Page Builder: Includes improved Page Builder CSS customisation and Page Builder content creation. The new version also offers an improved online experience.

It is always a good decision to upgrade Magento version 2.3.X to 2.4.2 or upgrade Magento 2.4.1 to 2.4.2.

If you want to learn more about the benefits of migrating or upgrading Magento versions, visit...