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Shopware website update for Studioexpress.de

About Studioexpress

Studioexpress is a German company that equips photo studios. Their online shop sells studio flash lights and accessories from brands such as Broncolor, Hedler, Hensel, Priolite and Profoto.

Project overview

The company turned to BelVG because they wanted to update the existing 5.4.3 Shopware version to a newer one. Shopware 6, however, was not considered the right solution for this online shop because this version did not yet have all the necessary extensions at the time. BelVG helped Studioexpress to update their Shopware store to version 5.6.9. We also updated the PHP version, Ubuntu on the server, and the CloudFlare CDN settings. In addition, the BelVG team set up synchronization with the CAO Invoice ERP system.

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Client

Studioexpress

Country

Germany

Industry

Retail

Platform

Shopware

Services & notable features

Shopware update
PHP update
CloudFlare CDN configuration

Integrations

CAO Invoice ERP system integration

Challenges with the Shopware upgrade

1. Before updating Shopware we needed to update PHP and the server to the latest at the moment Ubuntu 20.04.

2. It was impossible to update PHP right away. In the old version of Shopware, some modules were encrypted with ionCube. This is an encryption that Shopware no longer supports since version 5.5 and is only compatible with PHP version 7.0. If we immediately updated PHP to 7.4, the store would not work due to ionCube encrypted modules.

3. The customer uses CloudFlare CDN. But the settings for it are different in the new version of Shopware.

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Process of updating and problem solving

1. We analyzed the project and then made the copy of the website on the devserver and made all changes to that copy in order not interfere with business.

2. To update PHP to version 7.4, the developers found all the ionCube encrypted modules. Some of these have been removed, others have been replaced with alternatives. As a result, PHP was updated to version 7.4, which enabled the entire system to be upgraded.

3. We upgraded Ubuntu to the required version.

4. The local copy of the website was then updated to Shopware 5.6.9. At the same time, the BelVG team manually updated the settings for the CloudFlare CDN module.

5. The developers then transferred all changes to the customer’s test server to test the compatibility of the changes with this server environment.

6. Our QA-engineers discovered some errors, and then fixed them.

7. Then the live website went into downtime mode, and within several hours developers updated it to version 5.6.9.

Studioexpress-and-CAO-Faktura-integration

Synchronization with CAO Invoice ERP system

Challenge

Studioexpress uses CAO-Faktura as a merchandise management system. The issue was that the Shopware module for CAO-Faktura synchronization was no longer supported. So we could not use it for the new version of Shopware.

Solution

The BelVG developers suggested copying the old version of Shopware 5.4.3 store onto a separate server and configuring synchronization of the new version with Percona Toolkit.

Results of the upgrade and Shopware support

By upgrading its Shopware online shop, Studioexpress can take advantage of numerous improvements to the platform, including:

A new user administration for easier assignment of user roles
A new module in the administration to easily define different content types
Individual sorting of products on the category pages by drag-and-drop
Improved email management system

The BelVG team made all the necessary preparations to update the Studioexpress website quickly and easily. We tested the website on our and the customer’s server. That is why we identified possible errors on time and solved them. Thanks to that approach we upgraded the live version in just 2 hours.

We didn’t stop working on the project after the upgrade, the BelVG developers continue to update functionality and optimize the website.