Should I migrate from 1.6.1.23 to 1.7.xx ?

[fmoreira86]

Hi!

Straight to the point. I have a store with 7000 products that is up and running fine.

Sooner or later prestashop will stop the support for 1.6 (?).

Do you think it is a right move to move now to 1.7 ?

Thank you!

[PrestaHeroes USA]

No.  If everything is working fine.  Get a little more shelf life say one year from existing investment.

Yes, only if your upgrade is to get new features.

Do not.  Upgrade because of 'fear',  i.e. PS dropping support...or PHP level drop of support 5.6 etc.  Remember fear sells and for at least one year a 1.6/php5.6 | 7. is perfectly fine.  

front office: Most shops run perfectly fine but their front offices become dated and offer poorer visitor experience compared to new best practices.  Go look at 1.7 themes...like car shopping....we use for example leo themes for 99% of client upgrades.....the new features in theming for 1.7 for me is most important reason to upgrade.  Think of configuring 'quick buy' on productlist...but in general a new theme 'well implemented' can increase sales 20%+.

admin: look at 1.7 admin features that will lower your admin time (time is money)....did you know that 1.7 admin support mobile?  stock management for many is much improved, many more featrues.  

ps module eco.  nobody listen to techno no more....until 1.7 many top tier ecommerce features could not be written with existing templating system.  So we will start to see new features offered for ps only for 1.7 and higher.

Remember it's not about number of products it's about number of modules/core changes in existing shop that need to be carried forward into new shop.  All new 1.7 modules will be needed.  

Happy selling, el

 

[fmoreira86]

Thank you! What if this was a new shop? Would you recommend 1.6 or 1.7?

I put it that way because the migration labor will be mine (think of that as "no cost"). We buy some modules now and then And moving to 1.7 would obligate us to focus on the new version.

I see staying on 1.6 as "more work" for the future.

My major fears are the 1.7 not being mature now and having "stupid" bugs that affect the day to day of the store.

[PrestaHeroes USA]

new shop:  1.7 highly recommend and iit's advised.  1.7 blows 1.6 out of the water.

1.7 is 'very mature' as seen in the PS Addons market place. To be honest as addon's moudle/theme validation became more robust it's actually a better eco than 1.6...

tip: create a copy of your shop, back up that up so you can easily restore and start testing upgrade.  also you can create another subdomain and install latest ps to take it for a test drive.  

have fun...