Best of 2022: Magento 2.4.5 Updates

There’s a reason why eCommerce needs agile thinking and technical practices. It makes development and deployment real-time and practical. The specifics of any eCommerce tech stack can change rapidly, but fundamental techniques root the process and make the builds stable.

That’s one of the reasons I decided to write about Magento 2.4.5 (now Adobe Commerce) - because the eCommerce development process must be able to respond fast to changes, allowing new features to be conceived, developed, and put into production quickly. Here’s what’s new.

Key elements of the Magento 2.4.5 release:

• Substantial security enhancements

• Strengthened payment services

• Snappy GraphQL performance improvements

• Power-packed PWA studio

With enhancements to the core code, security fixes, and access to the latest Javascript libraries, Magento 2.5 has delivered some solid platform advantages. The transition might be a bit difficult, but there’s a way to make things easier.

Stick around and we’ll show you how.

#1 Security Enhancements

This is the most significant release from a security point of view. We’ve picked our favorite top 3 updates in the category.

• Google reCAPTCHA support

With the recent update, Adobe has made it clear that measures taken to improve security won’t be redundant. Sure, there might be a bunch of standard security-boosting APIs available, but will they be effective when sophisticated attackers never stop exploiting the weak spots?

By adding Google reCAPTCHA support to Wish List sharing, creating a new account and gift card forms, your store will be armored from malicious automated software activity.

• New ACL resources in the inventory

As a store owner, you will have access to create and manage a detailed arrangement for store access permissions for every user. You can review the existing roles in the admin dashboard. Here's how you can access this.

System > User Roles -> Add/Edit Role -> Role Resources

• Improved code validation with HTML Purifier

In our practice, we don’t recommend generic open-source HTML filtering solutions.

This is because hackers have an arsenal of XSS vectors hidden within the depths of the HTML specification. The HTML Purifier adds fine-grain filtering and cleans up all the malicious code. It’s highly customizable, and it’s more than impressive.

#2 Strengthened Payment Services

Magento 2.5 now enables store owners to create a better payment experience.

With new extensions, a store can accommodate new and evolving payment preferences with diverse payment options. Stores that opt for Adobe's fully integrated payment services can now toggle Apple Pay, Venmo, and location-based BNPL on and off from the admin dashboard.

Apart from bug fixes in the Magento Braintree module, the PayPal-owned payment system has discontinued access to Kount Custom for merchants using the PHP framework.

#3 Efficient API interactions

A front-end developer’s dream of making the store UI feel faster and more responsive is now ready to be realized.

Magento 2.4.5 lets developers access the full capabilities of their data from a single endpoint faster, delivering snappy improvements. The latest release has simplified the API architecture for front-end developers, helping them write more expressive and powerful data queries that will lead to 5% faster response times.

#4 PWA Studio Upgrades

Remember when your only choices were either a web or mobile application?

In 2021, Magento's PWA Studio packed a punch - with real-time communication, geolocation, push notifications, webGL and webVR.

Fast forward to 2022, the Magento 2.4.5 update now features more PWA studio options to build highly performant store applications. This includes collecting shoppers’ behavioral data and extensive GTM support.

Time for an early Christmas gift 🎁! Our cross-platform experts are ready to prime your eCommerce tech store for the holiday season. Sign up for a free eCommerce audit, and let's talk shop!