Magento 2.3.5, which is known as the latest version of Magento 2 at this time, has been officially released on April 28th, 2020 by Magento Inc. This release used to be an expectation among Magento user communities for its feature updates and fixed issues.
Is it necessary to upgrade to Magento 2.3.5?
As a popular ecommerce platform, Magento regularly improves its ability to adapt to higher performance and scalable demands. By using the latest version of Magento, you will be able to use the latest technology and significantly increase your website performance. So, the answer is “ABSOLUTELY YES.”
VISIT Magento 2 Store to get powerful support and level up your store.
Magento 2.3.5 Feature Updates Highlights
Table of Contents
Security enhancements
Security is always one of the top concerns of ecommerce businesses since they hold important information about customers and valuable data. With the release of Magento 2.3.5, store owners can be assured of high security while remaining compliant and consistently delivering great customer experience.
There are more than 25 security problems that have been fixed and improved in the latest version of Magento 2. The visibility of session-id values in URLs potentialize security vulnerability in the form of session fixation. Magento 2.3.5 removes those values at all.
On top of that, Magento 2.3.5 includes a host of powerful security tools. For example, the Content Security Policies (CSP) will be implemented for a better content protective barrier by detecting and mitigating Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) and related data injection attacks. This common attack vector injects malicious material, which is wrongly reported to originate from your website. As soon as the malicious material, it can trigger unauthorized data transfer.
Infrastructure Improvements
Magento 2.3.5 release provides merchants with new updates in core quality to level up the quality of the Framework and Catalog, Sales, PayPal, Elasticsearch, Import, and CMS. The PayPal Pro payment method now works as expected in the Chrome 80 browser. Besides, a PHPStan code analysis check has been added to Magento static builds to analyze static code and identify additional issues that are not recognized by PHP CodeSniffer and PHP Mess Detector.
Inventory management
In Magento 2.3.5, merchants can have an overview of allocated inventory sources from the Order List. The enhancements also include new extension point Source Data Provider and Stock Data Provider.
READ ABOUT Magento 2 Multi Source Inventory for the easiest explanation in one place.
Page Builder
Another significant update of Magento 2.3.5 focuses on the Page Builder feature to help store owners create more engaging websites.
The appeal of videos is superior to that of any other type of content. You may agree with this. That’s why the first improvement in Page Builder allows more video formats to be supported. Store owners can use videos as the background for rows, banners, and sliders. Thanks to this ability, there would be a variety in the design of CMS pages, and the final result would be more creative and appealing.
On top of that, the latest version of Magento 2 also allows saving Page Builder content and layouts as templates that can be used to create new content areas across sites and storeviews. As a result, web owners can save much time with available resources doing this task.
From now on, creating a CMS page in Magento will be easier without dependence on designers or developers. Just freely tell your story with customizable page layouts and intuitive drag-and-drop content management.
Awesome benefits of Page Builder Enhancements in summary:
- Create more powerful pages with more video formats supported to interest shoppers
- Easily control over your page with customizable layouts and intuitive drag-and-drop content management
- Save time and resources by saved templates
- Remove dependencies on other departments (designers, developers)
GraphQL
GraphQL is a data query language, which was developed to replace REST and SOAP web APIs for frontend development. In this latest Magento version, product and category list queries can be used to retrieve data about products and categories that have been included in a staged campaign.
PWA Studio
Progressive Web Applications (PWA) is released independently though its code is bundled with the release of Magento. PWA 6.0.0 includes both new features and enhancements of the existing.
- The PWA extensibility framework: allow developers to create an extensibility API or write plugins that can tap into those API and adjust storefront logic.
- Improvements in caching and data fetching: These improvements allow you to take advantage of Apollo cach features and decrease over fetching or avoid the storage of sensitive data.
- Shopping cart components: can be used for a full-page shopping cart experience.
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Deprecation of payment integrations
Magento core payment integrations have been no longer secure and at risk of getting outdated due to the Payment Service Directive and the continued evolution of many APIs. For this reason, some payment integrations will be removed from Magento 2.3.5 and later versions.
Here is the list of core payment integrations that will be completely deprecated from Magento 2.3.5 (many of them have been deprecated from previous versions).
- Worldpay
- Authorize.net
- Authorize.net (Direct Post)
- CyberSource
- Way
Notably, Paypal integration is supported for all Magento 2.3 versions and Magento 2.4.x.
Along with the deprecation, Magento recommends installing official extensions from the Magento Marketplace for alternatives.
Product Recommendations feature
Product Recommendations powered by Adobe Sensei is exclusive for Magento Commerce merchants of 2.3.x versions at no additional cost. This feature is wonderful like a marketing tool to engage customers, motivate conversions, and boost revenue.
Product Recommendation ability allows merchants to automatically recommend and show the most relevant product throughout the customer journey in the storefront. How can it do that? All customer behaviors are analyzed and processed using machine learning. This process will produce intelligent product relationships. Finally, related products are recommended for each unique buyer.
Right now, users of the latest Magento version can easily download Product Recommendations as an extension from Magento Marketplace (updated on April 13th, 2020).
How does Product Recommendation work?
- Download the module from Magento Marketplace, install, and configure
- After that, storefront tagging and catalog sync are deployed automatically
- Storefront events are collected, then catalog sync begins
- Customize the look and feel of Product Recommendations storefront template
- Create and deploy Product Recommendations from the admin panel
Google Shopping Ads Channel
Google Shopping Ads Channel has been supported and available for Magento 2.2.4+ and 2.3+ of Magento Open Source, Magento Commerce, and Magento Commerce Cloud. It allows merchants to integrate with their Google Merchant Center and Google Ads account for advertising and selling.
However, this feature will be deactivated on April 28th, 2020 in all Magento versions. It also means that it will not be available for 2.3.5 and previous versions anymore. To minimize the impact of transitioning out of the Google Shopping Ads Channel extension, Magento recommends two alternatives.
- Migrate your catalog and Google Campaigns directly to Google Merchant Center and Google Ads.
- Find at Magento Marketplace a new extension that meets your needs.
dotdigital
The release of Magento 2.3.5 contains the integration of Engagement cloud and Magento B2B, which allows B2B merchants to leverage B2B commerce data and better engage with prospective and existing customers. In this way, it can give you excellent support in the sync of company data, shared catalog data, and quote data.
Other platform enhancements
More than 180 product quality enhancements are made across the platform to deliver the best performance ever with improvements in Redis, Inventory Management (MSI), Platform Technology Stack, and VBEs.
- First, Elasticsearch 7.x is now available for catalog search engine in both Magento Commerce and Magento Open Source. Along with this upgrade is the deprecation of Elasticsearch 2.x and 5.x in Magento 2.3.x. Both those versions will be totally removed in Magento 2.4.
- The Signifyd fraud protection code is also deprecated in this Magento version. So, an alternate extension in Magento Marketplace is recommended for merchants.
- Magento 2.3.5 comes with required changes to support the use of Laminas libraries. As these changes are backward-compatible, there’s no problem to continue using the current code.
- The number of queries to Redis on each Magento request is optimized with the decrease in the size of network data transfer between Redis and Magento, in Redis’ consumption of CPU cycles, and in race conditions on Redis write operations.
Not only contains improvements, but Magento 2.3.5 has also fixed a number of existing issues in the previous version, which related to various functions and settings (search, cart and checkout, payment method, shipping, etc.).
How to Download Magento 2.3.5 Commerce?
There are ways to download and install Magento 2.3.5 Commerce. For the upgrade of the latest Magento Commerce version, we recommend getting support from certified Magento developers so that everything will go right.
Other Notable Release
Amazon Sales Channel
Supported for Magento 2.3.x, Amazon Sales Channel is a powerful module that allows store owners to manage accounts and sync data between Magento and Amazon. By installing this tool, you can create listings, manage promotions, set prices, manage inventory, and fulfillment directly via Magento Admin.
In addition to the release of Magento 2.3.5, an improved version of Amazon Sales Channel 4.0 has been updated with redesigned UI and revamped on the boarding process. The module is compatible with v2.3.x of Magento Open Source, Magento Commerce, and Magento Commerce Cloud.
Like Product Recommendations, you can easily get it at no cost from Magento Marketplace.
FIND HELP VIA Magento Full Tutorial for Beginner to Advanced for everything you need to know about Magento.
Now, What Should You Do?
Each Magento upgrade has an important meaning in improving performance and security. For this reason, we recommend every Magento website to upgrade to Magento 2.3.5 while waiting for the upcoming version.
Along with the Magento upgrade, maintenance activity should be implemented properly to keep your website secure and smooth. We would be honored to support you in those important tasks with our certified developers and Magento solution specialist.
FOLLOW 12+ Best Practices of Magento Website Maintenance for better help.
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