Magento 2.3 – Everything you Need to know About Magento’s Latest Upgrade

The most awaited Magento upgrade (Magento 2.3) is now here! Magento has just released Magento 2.3.0 – their latest upgrade to Magento 2 series.

The all new Magento 2.3.0 has several functional fixes, security updates, performance enhancements and comes with some amazing new features. If you were to describe this release in just three words, they would be Security, performance and innovation.

With Magento 2.3.0, you get unbreachable security, unmatchable performance, and lots of new features. Let’s explore some significant upgrades of Magento 2.3.0:

When it comes to security, the all new Magento 2.3 comes with over 30 security fixes to core Magento code. Apart from this, there are many significant security enhancements to ensure you get unbreachable security to keep the outsiders out of your Magento store. Here are some substantial security enhancements:

Two Factor Authentication:
One of the most sensitive part of Magento store is it’s admin panel. No one would ever want it to be in wrong hands. To help Magento store owners secure their admin panel, Magento introduces Two Factor Authentication with their latest upgrade. It provides an extra layer of security to Magento store. Store owners can configure their admin panel to require two factor authentication.

The authentication service supports the following authentication methods:

– Google Authenticator
– Authy
– Duo Security

Once enabled, this service will let the user login only if he successfully verifies his identity via SMS, Phone call, Access Token, or One Touch.

Google reCAPTHCHA:
reCAPTHCHA is a free service provided by Google to filter and restrict spam bots flooding your Magento store with junk. An advanced risk analysis engine is used by this service to detect any malicious or spam activity. It presents a human verification challenge to ensure only human traffic get through your store.

With Magento 2.3.0, you can enable this service on various pages of your store like:

– Login
– Register
– Contact form
– Forgot password
– Admin Login

Cache Management ACL:
Another resourceful enhancement in Magento 2.3 is a granular cache management ACL. Admins can define the user roles who can view and delete the Magento caches. This feature can be extremely useful when you have new team mates on board who might need some time to get accustomed with your store.

From the performance point of view, Magento has added multiple features to enhance the overall performance of your Magento store. Not just that, they have introduced many new features that reduce the strain on server, thereby delivering resources faster than ever before – giving you unmatchable performance all round. Here are some significant performance upgrades:

PHP 7.2 Support & Libsodium:
The shift to PHP 7.2 itself is a huge leap for Magento 2.3.0. With PHP 7.2 – you get many advantages like higher security, better performance, and a lot many new development features. More importantly, as PHP 7.2 ultimately removes PHP encryption module ‘mcrypt’, Magento 2.3.x will migrate from mcrypt to libsodium for password hashing.

Asynchronous API:
Asynchronous APIs are different than traditional web APIs. Traditionally, when a client makes a request to a Web Service, it has to wait for it’s response. The problem with that model is, if the catalog you’re trying to update is large – it might take considerable time to process the data. However, when it comes to Asynchronous APIs, processing is done much faster. And Magento 2.3.0 comes with Asynchronous API support. This means, you can process humongous data in no time.

Message Queue:
This is again a unique addon to Magento 2.3 which was earlier limited to Magento commerce only. However, now you can experience this feature with Magento 2.3.0. A message queue provides an asynchronous communications protocol, whereby messages / tasks are published into a queue and the sender does not require an immediate response to continue processing. This eases the strain on the application by providing a system of queuing tasks which needs to be completed. With this extra addon – you can get extraordinary performance from your Magento store.

GraphQL:
Introducing the new GraphQL API language is one of the biggest innovation in Magento 2.3.0. GraphQL was initially developed by Facebook and they publicly released it in 2015. Magento 2.3 implements GraphQL as an alternative API endpoint in addition to REST and SOAP. With this innovation – you can get more refined data with fewer API requests.

Declarative Database Schema:
Now developers can create, update, and delete tables directly via XML. This is a great upgrade as it will save a good deal of time, energy and resources for developers. Initially, to make changes to tables – developers had to create a series of scripts which were executed when module versions change.

Innovation has been the cornerstone of everything Magento does. Magento 2.3.0 introduces several new amazing features that can help you elevate your Magento store. Here are the enhancements you get with this new upgrade:

PWA:
Progressive Web Applications are the future of internet. With increasing use of mobiles, it is crucial to adapt and embrace the transformation or fear being left behind. In order to support Progressive Web Applications, Magento will be releasing a PWA Studio as part of the Magento 2.3 release. PWA Studio is a toolkit which will enable developers to build Progressive Web Apps on Magento platform.

Page Builder:
Magento 2.3.0 brings with it the most awaited feature of all the time. User friendly page builder is now a part of Magento. With this page builder, you can create engaging and dynamic CMS pages with responsive capabilities, with any coding skills. This page builder provides simple and intuitive drag and drop interface – with the help of which you can combine together a series of components such as Tabs, Accordions, Headings, Images, Media and more.

Elastic Search:
Elasticsearch support was previously provided in Magento Commerce only. However, with this upgrade – it is extended to Magento open source. ElasticSearch, in addition to many other usages, powers Magento’s site search capabilities, including faceted search (filtering by attributes).

Multi Source Inventory:
Another significant upgrade introduced in Magento 2.3.0 is Multi Source inventory. MSI gives store owners the ability to effectively manage their physical inventory regardless of the different locations (sources), directly from the website admin panel. Merchants can assign their products to various sources and keep a track of inventory at every location. They can also check quantity by source.

Final words…
Helping businesses create mesmerizing digital commerce experiences is Magento’s tradition. With this upgrade Magento proves it’s commitment to go beyond what seems possible and challenge the status quo by delivering world-class eCommerce solutions to brands and communities alike.

If you are still running your store on Magento 1? There wouldn’t be any better time to upgrade. Give us a shout and we will help you in migrating your Magento 1 store to the latest version of Magento.