It has now been a couple of months since Zen Cart 1.5.3 was released and we have now handled enough upgrades to the new version to provide our insights on the question that has been coming up when discussing upgrading Zen Cart with clients, is it time to upgrade Zen Cart 1.5.3?
Let’s start with what is new in Zen Cart 1.5.3. One of the big changes is that version 1.5.3 supports PHP 5.4, 5.5, and 5.6. The new version includes some security enhancements, including better password hashing. It also includes numerous bug fixes and some performance enhancements. You can find the full list of changes in the release announcement.
We have run into couple of issues when doing upgrades to 1.5.3. The first is that many addon modules do not officially support Zen Cart 1.5.3 yet. For some modules they may not need any changes and their maintainer just hasn’t bumped the Zen Cart version supported. Others that modify core Zen Cart files will need to have updated versions of those files included, until they do that you can use those with 1.5.3 if you apply the changes they make to those files to the versions of the file include with 1.5.3. Others need to be modified to work with Zen Cart 1.5.3. The second issue we have found is that some changes in Zen Cart 1.5.3 will require making changes with your current setup, for example changing the time zone now needs to be done differently and custom templates may need to be changed to support more secure redirect links.
With the basics set out, below we provide on advice on whether it is time to upgrade depending on your current situation:
Running Zen 1.3.9, 1.3.8, or older
If you are still running Zen Cart 1.3.9, 1.3.8, or and even older version you are overdue for an upgrade at this point so you should probably go ahead with the upgrade now. While issues with modules and 1.5.3 could cause some issues, you are going to probably run into module issues that will have to be dealt during testing when upgrading from those versions to any version of Zen Cart 1.5.
Need to Be Using a PA-DSS Certified Version of Zen Cart
Zen Cart 1.5.0 continues to be the only version to be PA-DSS certified, so for those that need that for PCI compliance purposes should remain on 1.5.0 for now. In the release announcement for 1.5.3 it says that a new PA-DSS certified version should “hopefully” be released in “only a couple months”.
Web Hosting Account Switching to PHP 5.4, 5.5, or 5.6
The number one reason we are hired do Zen Cart upgrades is that version currently being used is not compatible the version of PHP that the web server the website hosted on is being upgraded to. With the recent end of support for PHP 5.3 web hosts should be moving to at least PHP 5.4 soon (though many web host are only now transitioning off of PHP 5.2 despite support ending in January of 2011). Zen Cart 1.5.3 is the first release to support PHP 5.4, 5.5, and 5.6 so anyone moving to those versions of PHP should upgrade.
Running 1.5.0 or 1.5.1
If you don’t need to upgrade for the new versions of PHP, don’t have an urgent need for an of the bug fixes or improvements, and use a lot of modules you may to want hold off until more modules are updated for Zen Cart 1.5.3. Otherwise, it would be a good idea to do upgrade now.