Magento 1.4 Ready
We have been waiting long time and been keep looking out on the Magento 1.4 release. We are so happy to let everyone know that Magento finally released 1.4 version. There are several reasons why I was looking forward to this release. One of the most important features for me are definetly the WYSIWYG editor for almost everything and the Widget functionality.
Apart from the hundreds of bugfixes which were fixed in 1.4, there seems to be a major improvement regarding performance. In the backend of Magento 1.3, saving a product sometimes took upto 10 minutes because of some internal indexing of all products. These indexing tasks have now been improved, which makes the backend faster and more responsive.
In the backend, the cache management and index management have split up into two separate pages, making it easier to perform daily tasks. The coolest thing about the implemented WYSIWYG editor is that it allows you to upload all sort of media files next to your content, somewhat like WordPress does. This is a great boost in usability, hopefully it will cut down on the WordPress + Magento mixes we have been doing in several projects.
WYSIWYG Editor
One of the main features of Magento 1.4.0.0 is the new WYSIWYG-editor, which allows for easy editing of CMS-blocks and CMS Pages. The editor is actually a TinyMCE 3 editor extended with two Magento-specific plugins. These plugins allow you to insert so-called widgets into your content.
And a widget provides some kind of information specific for Magento: A store URL, a product image, a complete theming block. The WYSIWYG editor improves the managability of CMS Pages a lot. But it still has shortcomings regarding CMS-functionality which are all solved with our Magento to Joomla! bridge: Adding social tools, having a structure for all your content, blogging utilities, they are all reasons to choose for MageBridge instead of just a plain Magento instance.
Even better: With Joomla! it’s much easier to include other components as well: Helpdesk, forum, FAQ, screenshots, etcetera. With the coming of Magento 1.4, it’s surely not the end of MageBridge – it’s the beginning of a whole new era for MageBridgeTM with exiting new features.
Important Infos
Important Note 1: If the Magento Compilation Module is enabled it must be disabled before attempting to upgrade. After upgrading is done, click on “Run Compilation Process” to process and enable it again.
Important Note 2: If you are running Magento in a cluster environment and are using a shared cache (e.g. Memcached) you will need to make sure to configure Magento to use Database as the “slow” backend cache. More info will follow in our Knowledgebase and updated White-paper next week.
Please Note: We do NOT recommend upgrading a production installation of Magento directly. Please backup database and all files before upgrading. Please make sure to check file permissions before trying to upgrade through your Magento Connect Manager.
Get latest version of Magento 1.4 by visiting Magento Offical Pages and start to test drive.
