Not so long ago I reported on the release of Magento 1.8. This was a long time coming, and whilst it seemed that on the surface it was no great shakes in functional terms, a lot had changed under the bonnet – particularly around VAT calculations.
Now, only a few weeks later we have Magento 1.8.1 – which we see from the release notes corrects some challenges in the 1.8 release, in the area of VAT calculations for example.
This is proof that it pays to have an upgrade strategy that doesn’t leave you at the “bleeding edge”. It’s a good idea to hold off on diving into new releases (in old Microsoft parlance) “until Service Pack 1”, that is until a major new release heads into to the wild and gets found out!
So this will leave a lot of Magento users on 1.7.02, who hadn’t yet moved up to 1.8 in a strong position: hopping from 1.7.02 direct to 1.8.1 gives all of the functional improvements, but will have removed a lot of the teething troubles associated with 1.8.
So, here’s the Layer 5 recommendation: get Christmas out of the way, do nothing that risks your eCommerce operation until your New Year hangover has cleared, and look to move from your 1.7.02 (or 1.8 if you’re an early adopter) installation to 1.8.1 and enjoy a much lower risk migration, in January.
Contact Us if you need to talk any further about this upgrade process, or are thinking of taking it on. With Layer 5’s help we can get you there with minimal disruption to your eCommerce operation.