Magento - Page 2

As we look forward to 2016, it has become a bit of a tradition here at A2 Hosting to take a moment to look back on everything we’ve accomplished over the previous year. When looking back, it’s particularly satisfying to see the majority of our major accomplishments aligned directly with our overall goal; making sure you get the fastest page load speeds possible.

It’s been just over a year since we launched A2 Optimized WordPress. The goal of A2 Optimized WordPress was to take the guesswork out of how to get the fastest page loads and most secure settings. It is safe to say A2 Optimized WordPress has been a success with optimized WordPress sites loading up to 6X faster than non-optimized sites. A2 Optimized WordPress is available on all of our Hosting packages and we have since have made it available to all WordPress users regardless of their host (with a few feature limitations).

When we launched our Turbo Servers back in November 2014, we touted up to 20X faster page load speeds thanks to a number of features like the A2 Optimized Site Accelerator, fewer users per server and enhanced performance over Apache. If 20X faster page loads weren’t enough for you to give our Turbo offering a try, we’ve updated these servers and included even more features:

With all the Magento 2 Optimizations we can expect, it’s not surprising you want to get your hands on the latest version of Magento. From performance boosts to an enhanced dashboard, Magento 2 certainly sounds like the real deal. However with Magento 2 still in beta, it may be a bit of time before we can move to 2.0 on production sites. While we sit and wait for the latest and greatest version to get released, Magento published a rough timeline of events so we can at least have a reasonable idea of when this new version will be made available.

Recently we took a look at a technology stack comparison of Magento 1 vs Magento 2. Just a few of these improvements featured in Magento 2 include PSR compliance and CSS3. Of course the technology stack is just one of the many optimizations found in Magento 2. Here’s a quick look at some of the other improvements featured.

With the beta release and the steady movement towards the stable release of Magento 2, are you getting your plan ready to upgrade to Magento 2? There are going to be a number of improvements in Magento 2. Let’s look at the differences in the technology stack between Magento version 1 and 2, and how they will improve the performance of your store.

If you are a Magento user, you’re probably well aware of the fact there is a beta version of Magento 2 currently available. Since this is a beta version, you won’t want to upgrade your production site quite yet. However since this beta version will eventually lead to a stable version, now is as good of a time as any to start planning your upgrade. That way you can get the fastest and most secure version when Magento 2 becomes available.

In previous blog posts, including our comparison of HHVM vs PHPNG, we talk about how PHP 7 typically beats HHVM by up to 20% and it is up to 100% faster than PHP 5.6 (even though we do need to run our own performance comparisons here at A2 Hosting). These numbers are definitely provide a nice broad overview of the dramatic performance boost and memory efficiency enhancements offered by PHP 7.

Hacks are an unfortunate reality when you run your own website. The malicious nature of hackers can turn a successful website into a nightmare in a matter of seconds. While no website is immune against hacking, there are many things you can do protect yourself, your clients, and your revenue. Here’s a quick overview of some common practices that can help you keep your website safe and secure: