The development of various e-commerce platforms does not stop for a minute, and Magento is no exception. Continuous improvement is a way to delight customers and grows the user base. E-commerce business owners are constantly in need of new technologies and features that can make it easier to run a business and provide a competitive edge. The latest version of Magento at the moment is 2.4.3, and if you are still thinking about updating your platform, we will tell you what is so special about this update and why you should go for this version. So, without further ado, let’s get started.
What Magento 2.4.3 Brings to Business Owners
So, as we said above, the latest up-to-date version available for download at the moment is Magento 2.4.3. This is the main development branch. But the team also supports the legacy code of some previous versions. For example, along with the release of the 2.4 branches, a patch for Magento 2.3.7 was submitted (this version does not yet require the mandatory presence of Elasticsearch 7). However, today is not about that. Let’s take a closer look at the main innovations of version 2.4.3.
- Release of Elasticsearch tool. Elasticsearch is an extension of site search capabilities with filtering by attributes. Previously, the integration was available only in the paid build of Magento since Magento 2.4.0 can be used by developers working with Open Source. Added support for the Live Search search engine (another product from Adobe for large retailers).
- TinyMCE and of support. The TinyMCE editor has been partially replaced with its own implementation – Page Builder (an interactive page builder that was previously available only in the commercial version of the engine, now it can also be used in Magento Open Source). All content created earlier in TinyMCE will be transferred to the Page Builder as HTML code.
- Two-factor authentication implementation. Any owner of an e-commerce store can now prompt users to verify their identity using a code sent to their phone via SMS. This feature has been implemented to provide even more security for both user data and the integrity of business stores.
- Implementation of additional protection methods. Protect key web pages from bots and intruders with Google ReCAPTCHA.
- Advanced cache controls. Developers implemented additional permissions and access control.
- New PHP version. Developers brought support for PHP 7.4 with improved security, improved performance, and access to up-to-date tools. More and more features are being migrated to support PHP 8.0 (the migration process has not yet been completed, and full support is not yet available).
- Introduction of PWA support. This technology by which the website functions as a web application eliminates the need to create a mobile version of the pages.
- Adding a GraphQL query language to use the API. Its implementation was due to the increased number of requests in different projects.
- Multi-source inventory feature. It is a feature for efficient inventory management and inventory management. Allows you to manage products and their quantity from several sources: store, warehouse, distribution center, third-party suppliers.
- New interactive assistant. This feature was added to facilitate the process of setting up important functions.
- Images optimization. Developers Implemented an automatic optimization of images in the media gallery to reduce file size and improve showcase performance/load speed.
- Compatibility tool update. This update brings better performance even though it is still in alpha testing status.
- Security fixes, bug fixes, and other smaller features. For example, protection against denial-of-service attacks is implemented by forcibly reducing the connection speed of individual clients. Updated built-in and third-party libraries/tools, e.g. B2B, PWA Studio, etc.
The most important and interesting innovation in Magento 2.4.3 is the appearance of a visual editor. Thanks to him, support for dragging interface objects with the mouse appeared, as well as a preview of the result, allowing users with a low level of technical training to customize pages.
The constructor helps to create a spectacular design, edit product and category cards, customize the appearance of site sections without editing the code. You can also embed mini-galleries and widgets to present content visually.
Wrapping Up
As you can see, there are quite a few changes, and they are all quite important. All of them are designed to improve the user experience of store owners their customers, as well as to increase the security of all parties from intruders. There are many more updates with new features ahead of us, and the next 2.4.4 will be released on March 8th. So we will keep our finger on the pulse of the news in order to be the first to know about new Magento products.
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