Upgrading a site has become a regular practice. The benefits to upgrade often are to have the system secure, more performant and bring the latest fixes into the shop. Finally, upgrades are the promises to keep your shop rich featured: using recent versions of modules and framework bring new opportunities to make more profits.
An upgrade can be a small task if all the components in the system are compatible with one another: this includes the framework, the third-party modules, the hosting parts. It goes without saying either of these components tend to grow in size and complexity overtime
If you are good in mathematics, you can see these formulas can be scary and it seem as if we are losing control. But all these components are well tested and use code of high standard. So, it is where the magic happens! Although our world is complex and we can predict the bad or the good with as much predictability. In general, we are doing ok.
So, in this article, I will bring 3 principles that can help keep things tidy and enable you to go in control with your shop.
- invest in understanding what you have in your system to prevent to install a module that is not needed
- nurture a curious mind with your third-party modules to remain in control with their ways to bend the framework and understand their possible side-effects
- keep reports of your activities to see the bad patterns ahead of the customer visiting your shop
Each of these practices can be time consuming and can deter you to move your system forward. If we go back to the basics, there is not much we can do about the framework: frameworks are powerful ways to deliver an up-and-running system in a short time and they have the advantages to be built and tested by experts to deliver the best for many systems with a varieties of requirements. So, as soon as you have decided to use a framework, you MUST be committed to keep it upgraded. Same as your phone, same as your computer and so on.
So, at this point, the hosting and the third-party modules are what remain to save our wallet to get empty faster than we get it filled up. Hosting is nowadays a complex domain as it often involves to works with a multitude of components in the cloud (database, cache, proxy, web server). Third-party modules have become really well organised. It is possible to buy pretty much anything for a shop and often module providers give access to these modules with a subscription model. So, as long as these modules provide the ROI that you have budgeted, they are a perfect way to build your shop.
We have seen a small naive version of why upgrade practices can be like throwing a dice with your business. Although an e-commerce system has many technologies, components involved, we have seen a process to prioritise our choices and our investments to get these in our systems with a mindful awareness of how they work with our profits and loss report.