Migrating from Magento Enterprise Edition (EE) to Magento Community Version (CE)
If you initially opted for Magento Enterprise version (EE) (with around $18000/Yr. cost) and would like to revert to free Magento Community version (CE) how do you do it? Here are valuable insights from our experience.
There are two approaches.
Removing EE files:
1) You can try to downgrade your installation of EE by removing enterprise files. There is a blog written here
However this approach does not work. At least we did not suceed.
The better but more lengthy approach which works is rebuilding the site afresh on community (CE ) version
2) You can start fresh with a new community install and bring over your code ,design modifications and data from EE to CE.
The key here is to migrate the most useable code from EE version to CE version.
But before taking any of these two approaching complete analysis of the project is essential.
Initial Analysis
In initial analysis following study to be made
- Identify and document any custom modifications/ changes done in EE version and ascertain if all these can be emulated in CE version
- Make a list of Extensions installed and check If the CE versions of the extensions are also available on Magento Marketplace.
- Create another web hosting account wherein you may load the CE version for migration. The original EE installation should never be disturbed till you are sure that CE version is ready to replace EE version.
Our Migration experience: Step by Step:
Initial study : During initial study we analysed the scope of a project. We analysed the project requirements, functionality flow, database structure, frontend design and template structure.
Planning - Magento has a large code base and database . To make things easier ; work should be broken down in following distinct tasks.
- Theme Migration (HTML and CSS)
- Database migration
- Third party extensions reinstall.
Step 1 : Theme Migration
1.1 Template Integration(HTML) - Copy the enterprise edition template to community edition.
1.2 Skin Integration (css) -Copy enterprise edition skin(css) to community edition.
1.3 Assign new theme to magento frontend store.
1.4 Integrate local code in template.
Step 2 : Database Migration
2.1 Export product data to csv format.
2.2 Create products attribute set , attribute groups and attributes as per enterprise edition.
2.3 To assign images to products, put images into /media/import folder and change your images path in csv relative to /media/import folder.
2.4 Import the product data from CSV file.(increase import file size )
Step 3 : Third party extensions installation which we freshly installed on CE version.(fortunately all had CE compatible versions)
3.1 Integrated banner slider extension.
3.2 Integrated one page checkout extension.
3.3 Add zoom plugin for product details page.
3.5 Integrate Custom_Login_Redirect extension.
3.6 IntegrateAngelleye_PayPal_BML_Banners extension.
3.7 Integrate BL_CustomGrid extension.
3.8 Integrate ParcelPro_Carrier extension.
3.9 Ebizmarts_MageMonkey extension.
Some other issues to be noted
1) Customer login section template - enterprise version doesn't work :
Form validation method change in new community version (i .e 1.9.0 ). So use community version base template instead of using the legacy EE version.
2) Data import : Customer & Product data :
Export from enterprise version and import in community version(create same attributes and attributes set) is possible . However one cannot directly import subscriber and order data in CE version fro EE version. A custom script needs to be written for the purpose.
3) URL re-direct management :
Enterprise version in built functionality of url-redirect whereas community version has url redirect management functionality.
4) Indexing :
In enterprise edition data indexing is auto for URL Redirects, Stock Status,Catalog Search Index,Product URL Rewrites,Category URL Rewrites,Catalog Category/Product Index and Catalog product price; whereas In community edition index management is manual.
The downside
One of the biggest issue we faced after migration was speed. Indeed! Magento Enterprise version site is much faster due to its indexing and cache management . We had to do some ultra tuning up on Magento CE including installing memcached & Varnish.
Would you require more information on migrating Magento EE version to Magento CE version wite to us on: [email protected]
