The Past, Magento 2.3, and the Future
The whole Magento community has been eagerly waiting for the Magento 2.3 release for a long time, and on November 28th 2018 we could finally go find that champagne from the fridge, as Magento 2.3.0 was officially released.
So, should you open the champagne — or put it back in the fridge?
The past
I've read through quite a few blog posts about the 2.3 release, and see very few dare to mention the big elephant. Yes, you of course know — the issues we all have experienced in the previous M2 releases (2.0, 2.1 and 2.2), and so I thought I'd take the honor of just briefly touching onto them before going through the 2.3 features.
Magento 2.0 and Magento 2.1
Having built up one of the very first Magento partners worldwide, from all the way back in 2008/2009, and having been directly responsible for delivering well over 1000 Magento stores of any size and complexity over the last decade, we have gained just enough experience that we immediately understood — without going into details — all the way back to 2016 that we would not let our clients move over from Magento 1.x (mainly CE1.9 and EE1.14) to Magento 2.0, nor Magento 2.1.
More and more of our clients are now thanking us for this advice.
Magento 2.2
It wasn't until Magento 2.2.0 came out we decided we would let our clients touch base with the new Magento 2 platform, and we have since then released 40+ successful Magento 2 based stores.
With that said, with Magento 2.2.0 to 2.2.6, we have experienced most issues possible; from caching and indexing to pricing rules and product management issues, and if it wouldn't be for our extensive experience delivering complex ecommerce solutions, we would guaranteed have lost many customers if we had forced them over to Magento 2 earlier.
So, always trust what your supplier is telling you, if the supplier has 10+ years of extensive experience in its field, that is. We have seen new and upcoming Magento suppliers “strongly recommending” moving over to Magento 2.0. These suppliers are for the most not in business today.
Conclusion so far, then:
- Magento 2.0 was like Magento 2 Release Candidate (don't touch unless highly experienced)
- Magento 2.1 was like Magento 2 Beta (install it and play around with it)
- Magento 2.2 was like Magento 2.0 should have been (its early on, but all new clients should move to it, plus existing non-critical M1 clients can be migrated)
Which brings us to Magento 2.3
So, with Magento 2.3 being released a few weeks ago, where is Magento 2.3?
First and foremost, there are tons of great new features introduced in Magento 2.3, which we are going through a little more in-depth in the section below.
With that said, there will- and are already- at the same time introduced multiple new issues in such a big update. Also features reportedly to be part of 2.3.0 is not coming until 2.3.1 at earliest, and given the history briefly mentioned above we will need to hold our horses a little while longer.
Summarized; No Trollweb clients will be released on Magento 2.3.0. Maybe when 2.3.1 comes out. Most likely on 2.3.2.
Ok, we'll wait, but which features can we expect in Magento 2.3?
Magento 2.3 introduces quite a range of new features, some highly technical, and some more “above the surface”.
Multi Source Inventory a.k.a MSI
MSI finally introduces the possibility of having multiple warehouses / inventories in Magento (this type of functionality has been available in the data structure even in M1, however it has never made it “to the surface”).
MSI even supports the possibility of delivering products from the nearest warehouse depending on the shipping information on the client's order. Quite nice.
This is complex stuff though, so don't cancel your ERP subscription just yet.
Is this a must-have feature? For most, no.
PWA Studio
The most “hyped” feature in Magento 2.3 is by far the introduction of PWA, which gives… oh, no. What are you saying? I cannot just enable PWA in the backend settings and POF my store is PWA compatible?
Nope. Not even close to.
The support for PWA in Magento 2.3 is both the most hyped up feature, and at the same time the most misunderstood one.
Magento 2.3 includes something called PWA Studio, which is kind of a 3rd party utility package which allows for creating Progressive Web Application functionality on the frontend of the store.
PWA Studio can be seen as the brilliant robot producer Kuka which manufactures robots able to assemble for example EVs (Electrical Vehicles).
However it's still up to Tesla (here: the Magento supplier, like Trollweb) to use the robots (a.k.a PWA Studio) to develop and make the final solution (Tesla cars a.k.a PWA-compatible e-commerce sites).
The robot manufacturer Kuka is somewhat like PWA Studio — pretty cool, and at the same time darn complex!
We all agree PWA is the next big thing to ensure high performance on mobile, and that most sites over the next 5–10 years most likely will be PWA compatible, however the process of building up your webshop to be PWA compatible will be a long (costly) and hard-learning process.
Learn more about PWA on this Google I/O talk
While we are on PWA, what it will cost to get your Magento store PWA compatible, you ask?
The best way to explain that is to rewind back 5–6 years ago when we started on RWD (you know, Responsive Web Design).
Our rule of thumb when implementing RWD to either an existing or new design was to multiple the non-RWD implementation (e.g desktop version) with 1.5x — 2.0x (today we don't allow for non-RWD, even on B2B deliveries).
For PWA, the answer is the same, with an additional multiplier of pi (3.14). So, lets's say it is estimated to take 200 hours to implement a new design for both desktop/tablet and mobile, then adding RWD support would bump the estimate a staggering 3.14, clocking in at a total of 600+ hours.
Be sure to read this great article from Yireo on their thoughts fo PWA in Magento 2.
Is this a must-have feature? Yes, however it is gonna be expensive and time-consuming.
Page Builder (Enterprise only)
Another “new” feature in Magento 2.3 is the Page Builder.
Page Builder is actually based upon an acquisition Magento made in December 2016 of the company Bluefoot, where Magento tried to fast-track solve the issue of the basically non-existing CMS editor in Magento.
Although the intention behind this acquisition was good, spending two years to implement it is to say it the least an extremely sub-optimal achievement.
One of the biggest issues with such delays is that suppliers/partners then wait and keep up their hopes for it to be re-launched into the core of Magento. When this doesn't happen, our clients start to get impatient, and push us as suppliers to come up with alternatives.
If you can't wait — solve it yourself
Our solution to address the CMS issue in Magento was therefore to build our own CMS solution — based upon Wordpress. This has been a huge success, and we today have 50+ clients running all their CMS functionalities (landing pages, front pages, campaign pages, info pages, etc) on our “WPCloud” solution as we fancily named it.
PS, the Page Builder is not part of Magento 2.3.0. To get early access you need to opt in for the Magento Early Adopter Program by mailing pagebuildereap@adobe.com. Limited availability so be quick. Hopefully in Magento 2.3.1 Page Builder will be a natively part of Magento 2.
Will we move our clients over from WPCloud to Page Builder? Maybe some time in 2019. Just maybe.
Is Page Builder a must-have feature? For Trollweb clients — which has WPCloud, no.
GraphQL, MessageQueue and Declarative schemas
Under the hood of Magento 2.3 you will find lots of really great new features. GraphQL is a relatively new and alternative web service API to the more commonly used REST and SOAP APIs. GraphQL will definitely be warmly welcomed to Magento.
MessageQueue is another great new feature, that can be used both with or without RabbitMQ. MessageQueue takes requests async and will definitely speed up job processing.
Declarative Schemas will in short ease both installations, upgrades and even — if you dare — rollbacks.
Is this a must-have feature? For most, no.
Other new features
- Magento 2.3 introduces Google's reCaptcha to handle spam.
- The admin section now (finally) supports 2FA, for increased security.
- Elastic Search support has been improved.
- The WYSIWYG is now upgraded to TinyMCE 4.6, which actually looks relatively nice, and is almost what you get.
- Improved indexing time by over 60% on average.
- PHP 7.2 support.
So, summarized
Magento 2.3.0 is per our definition beta, and so we will not release any clients on this version. 2.3.1 maybe. 2.3.2 very much likely.
When will 2.3.2 be released? Hopefully during early Q1 2019.
And about that champagne bottle?
The recommendation is to put it back in the fridge and consider taking it back out and bounce it up in a later 2.3 release.
