Even though January was the first month of 2024, many things have happened as we all entered this year excited and motivated. These weeks were filled with new projects, updates, and ambitious plans. Thanks to the work of the devoted community and our team, Sylius experienced many improvements in numerous areas. Moreover, three Sylius-based stores were launched, many insightful blogs about Sylius were published, and the platform was a topic of many active discussions on social media. We also conducted strategic workshops at our HQ, updated our roadmap to clarify the plans for the future, expanded our partnership network, and did many other things in between.
Without further delay, let’s get into our first summary in 2024!
This January, the Sylius team and our community have continued to make strides in enhancing the functionality and stability of our eCommerce platform. Throughout the month, we’ve seen a concerted effort across various improvements that further refine our system and ensure it remains a cutting-edge solution for users worldwide. Take a look at the key developments this month:
Performance optimization remained a priority, with contributions aimed at improving product page load times and reducing database queries, which are essential for providing a smooth user experience.
The platform’s API and core functionalities saw significant expansions, including adding new autocomplete features, improvements in locale validation within the ResourceBundle, and a focus on enhancing email management within command handlers.
Contributors have also diligently addressed various issues, such as fixing unexpected stock errors in the Admin Panel and excluding disabled products and variants from catalog promotions, directly contributing to the platform’s reliability and merchant satisfaction.
Lastly, we welcomed a range of community contributions, including adding new repository classes for core entities, documentation updates, and implementing new features like payment request additions to the API
We are excited about the progress made in January and are committed to continuing our journey of improvement and innovation. With the collaborative effort of our team and the community, we’re looking forward to bringing even more enhancements and features to the Sylius project. Stay tuned for more updates as we keep pushing the boundaries of eCommerce excellence. 🚀
– Wojdylak: Contributed to moving locale validation to the ResourceBundle and played a significant role in platform maintenance.
– NoResponseMate: Focused on removing deprecations, updating unstable build dependencies, and contributing to the platform’s stability.
– Rafikooo: Worked on enhancing email management within command handlers and fixing misleading error messages.
– TheMilek: Addressed serialization group fixes for resources and subresources.
– LucaGallinari: Contributed by excluding disabled products and variants from catalog promotions.
– loevgaard: Allowed for the use of a newer version of sylius/calendar and experimented with SyliusResourceBundle and SyliusGridBundle versions.
– loic425: Attempted newer bundle versions, contributed to configurable grid solutions, and fixed some Panther end-to-end tests.
– jakubtobiasz: Made extensive contributions towards performance improvements, added new functionalities such as a new autocomplete feature, and worked on fixes.
– GSadee: Focused on API improvements by changing the interface of decorated IriConverter and addressing issues related to serializer groups.
– benbd5: Contributed to the documentation, specifically updating the state machine architecture.
– Prometee: Added a new feature by introducing a Payment request to the API.
– senghe: Contributed to performance fixes, particularly reducing database queries on product update forms and other enhancements.
– maximehuran: Worked on improving shop templates by using SyliusShop macros.
– mamazu: Contributed to migrating shop grid configuration to PHP.
– Jibbarth: Focused on user experience (UX) and developer experience (DX) improvements, particularly around checkout and shipping methods.
– stefandoorn: Improved the live component country type and addressed UI elements in the Admin Panel.
There is also one credit we should give at this point to our external Core Team Members, who worked hard on releasing new Grid & Resource Bundle tags. This was mainly conducted by Loïc Fremont from Akawaka, our Premium Solution Partner from France, and other Core Team members, who dedicated their time to supporting the project on many levels, such as design workshops, internal consulting, helping out our community on Slack, and many, many other actions. Thank you!
These contributors, among many others, play a crucial role in enhancing the Sylius platform through their varied efforts, ranging from performance enhancements and bug fixes to new feature development and documentation updates. Their dedication and expertise help ensure that Sylius remains a leading and innovative eCommerce solution, and we are extremely grateful for their work. 💪
January was the month of launching many exciting Sylius-based projects. Let’s take a look! ⬇️
An FNAC.tn is an online marketplace that offers a place to sell and buy a wide array of products ranging from the latest electronics, books, and multimedia items to an extensive selection of home appliances and personal gadgets.
In this project, the H360 Horizon team utilized Sylius’s flexibility and performance to create unique shopping experiences and handle traffic in peak hours, along with React.js and Elasticsearch.
BitBag recently published a case study describing their JAST USA project work. JAST, known for high-quality products and customer-centric services, is a publisher and distributor of Japanese visual novels and anime-inspired games for English-speaking audiences. The primary goal of the project was to create a modern website that delivers a great customer experience.
From migrating data from Magento to Sylius, creating a new graphical interface, and implementing advanced product search and filtering, BitBag developed a modern and intuitive application that aimed to enhance user experience and improve overall store functionality. You can view the full case study here.
Mits software development agency chose Sylius to create a website for hobby horsemanship fans. The aim of this project was to develop an application that provides great performance at all times, as well as easy editing and assortment. As a result, the new website provides fast loading times on all devices and very intuitive navigation, along with an affiliate system for registered users and numerous product personalization options. A full case study is available here.
Apart from exciting new Sylius-powered projects, many blogs that revolved around Sylius were published. Here are some of them that are certainly worth checking out:
First of all, we released a blog summarizing all projects, events, and updates related to Sylius in 2023, as well as the company’s future plans for the upcoming year. This blog covers much information, including exciting events and challenges for Sylius and the people around it. Feel invited to read it!
Moving on, BitBag published three insightful pieces of content:
As we do every month, we‘ve browsed social media to create a list of interesting and engaging mentions about Sylius:
Moreover, we’ve updated Sylius’ roadmap by adding two versions of Sylius. 1.13 release will be the last major version of Sylius before the upcoming 2.0. It will cover API stabilization, upgrading the dependencies, performance updates, and improving the Developer Experience to prepare the environment for future growth.
The release of the 2.0 version will be the time of Sylius’ evolution. Our goal is to become the top open-source eCommerce framework you can use to customize eCommerce experiences in a User&Developer-friendly environment.
Apart from that, Sylius Plus is already available in a modular architecture, offering better tailored to individual needs. The plugin infrastructure decouples Sylius Plus, which will be reflected in the pricing. Also, Sylius is offering a B2B module consisting of B2B functionalities like organization and customer pricing management to reduce time-to-market for B2B stores.
Speaking of modules, we also recently introduced a One Page Checkout ready-to-use module to make the checkout process more efficient and enjoyable.
If you want to use Sylius to the fullest, check our commercial offer and how it could support your project here.
While we focus on upcoming changes, we do not forget about regular security and improvements patch releases based on our customer’s feedback and support tickets.
If you want to learn more about our further plans for the upcoming months, they are thoroughly described by our CEO in the online presentation on YouTube.
Speaking about future plans, open-source eCommerce enthusiasts should not forget about these two events that will take place in February, where Sylius will be a hot topic 🔥!
On February 22nd in Cologne (Germany), the second Symfony Community Night will take place. Organized by QOSSMIC and moderated by Oliver Kossin, this event will be a chance to meet other passionate Symfony enthusiasts and listen to 4 special guests representing Shopware, Magento, Spryker, and Sylius: Soner Sayakci, Andreas von Studnitz, Denis Turkov, and Mateusz Zalewski – our Core Team member.
The general topic of this event is Symfony and the Symfony ecosystem; however, the main topic is “Evolution & Future of PHP E-Commerce”
This is one of the very rare occasions to listen to these many representatives of each software vendor in a single place. Don’t wait and sign up for the event!
The eCommerce Berlin Expo 2024 is a leading trade fair for the eCommerce industry, showcasing the latest trends, innovations, and solutions in online retail. It brings together business leaders, eCommerce experts, and technology providers from around the world to network, share insights, and explore future developments in the digital marketplace.
At this event, our friend and the founder of Locastic, Antonio Perić-Mažar, will deliver a presentation about Tommy.hr – one of the biggest online grocery stores in Croatia that went through a digital transformation after the start of cooperation with Locastic during the pandemic. The event will take place also on February 21st in Berlin, Germany.
You can register for the event here!
We’re thrilled that Storyblok has joined our ecosystem as a Professional Technology Partner! Storyblok is a CMS designed to support teams at various stages of the content lifecycle, offering a headless architecture that allows companies to create better content more efficiently and without limits. With around 230 team members based in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland, Storyblok enjoys the trust of companies in over 130 countries, supporting content creation, management, enhancement, and delivery across multiple platforms.
Next, we are happy to introduce our latest Professional Solution Partner, the French agency Aikini. The agency specializes in eCommerce and website development, providing comprehensive support for digital projects, including consulting, hosting, development, and UI/UX design. Aikini delivers digital projects that are technologically advanced, flexible, creative, and efficient. For that reason, Sylius is a great fit.
We’ve started a year with two days of intensive workshops in our HQ in Opole, Poland, devoted to planning the strategy for the year 2024. It was a productive time when we already planned lots of community & eCommerce domain-driven activities on each strategic market of ours in the following months. With a team like this, the future is bright and exciting!
Last but not least, our team is constantly working on extending Sylius Plus functionalities to provide the best user experience. What’s more, we are planning a series of blogs devoted to describing each module in Sylius Plus, as well as launching a marketing campaign on our social media channels. Stay tuned!
Summing up, many exciting things happened, and it’s just the beginning of the year! With an eye toward the future, we remain excited and hopeful for the new developments and events that will emerge. The dynamism and energy that have characterized the start of this year are just the beginning, signaling a period of growth and partnerships that will undoubtedly impact Sylius and the devoted community around it. Till the next one!
