A Rundown Of Magento 2 Technology Stack

Magento is widely used as an eCommerce platform by online stores across the globe. Magento’s much talked about version 2 has been in the works for quite long. It was finally launched to the general public a few months back with significant updates to its technology stack.

There are major improvements for every firm offering Magento solutions. It’s more developer friendly and the backend has been completely revamped to focus on ease of use for store owners and merchants.

Let’s briefly take a look at the changes and feature additions in Magento 2 Technology Stack:

1.  Apache: By far the most widely used web server, Magento 2.0 requires you to run Apache 2.2x or 2.4x. This is a solid upgrade from Magento 1 which ran on Apache 2.x.
2.  Nginx: Nginx is a popular reverse proxy server which can be used in place of Apache. Magento 2 has built-in support for Nginx which is a welcome news for Nginx lovers who are looking for low memory usage and faster performance than Apache.
3. PHP: The programming language at the core of Magento is getting an upgrade and a significant one at that. Magento 2 now requires PHP version 5.5 or 5.6x by default and it even supports the latest PHP 7. This should translate to faster performance for Magento stores. A number of PHP extensions like PDO/MySQL, mbstring and crypt are also required in Magento 2.
4. MySQL: The most loved database for open source projects gets an upgrade to version 5.6x in Magento 2.
5. Varnish: This is an efficient caching mechanism for loading sites faster. In Magento 1, Varnish had to set up using third-party extensions. With Magento 2, Varnish is deeply integrated into the core and can be setup with a few commands or clicks in the backend.
6. Composer: The popular dependency manager for PHP, is now integrated into Magento 2. With this, developers can easily manage their libraries for a project and browse/install packages from https://packagist.org/.
7. jQuery: The write less do more Javascript library is a welcome change in Magento 2. It replaces the aging prototype JS library from Magento 1.
8.  Zend Framework: Magento 1 borrowed components from Zend Framework 1. It continues this pattern and now utilizes important components from the updated Zend Framework 2.
9.  Symfony: This is a new entrant in Magento 2. Besides pulling from ZF1 and ZF2 frameworks, Magento 2 now re-uses Symfony components at various places in Magneto 2. 

The upgraded technology stack will bring in more opportunities for everyone. This will certainly mean more engaging online stores for users, easier administration for merchants and a better checkout flow with more conversions.

Magento 1 was getting dated fast and now is the right time to retire Magento 1 for your stores and upgrade to Magento 2. It’s truly a new era of commerce innovation and the possibilities are endless.

What are your opinions about the changes in Magento 2 Technology Stack? Please leave your comments below.