A Look Back at SyliusCon 2024

Tools and ideas to help your e-commerce projects grow

On November 13, 2024, Lyon hosted the third annual SyliusCon.

Through technical demonstrations, case studies, and practical discussions on industry challenges, more than 25 different speakers shared their expertise, addressing the diverse needs of the participants and providing an overview of the new features introduced by Sylius and their potential impact on projects.

As a Platinum Sponsor, with numerous projects such as the PSG Ticket Office, FC Nantes, Gérard Drouot Productions, VTF Vacances, and the Natural History Museum,our experts offer a detailed analysis of the key takeaways from the day’s events.

Sylius 2.0: What the New Version Actually Changes

One of the most anticipated moments of the event was the announcement of Sylius 2.0: a major update to the framework. More than just a cosmetic refresh or an incremental improvement, this version rethinks several aspects of the platform. For developers and decision-makers, here is a summary of the key changes to consider.

Enhanced modularity

The concept of modularity is central to Sylius 2.0. In practical terms, this means that projects can be built as a collection of independent building blocks. You only need the features that are necessary for your business. For example:

• If you do not handle complex promotions, you can disable the corresponding module, which reduces the complexity of the project.

• Are you developing a B2B store with specific requirements? The system’s modularity allows you to activate only the components you need and customize them without affecting the rest of the system.

For technical teams, this results in code that is lighter, faster, and—above all—easier to maintain. Future updates also become less risky, since they can focus on specific modules.

A simpler user interface

E-commerce administration can often be a headache for end users. With Sylius 2.0, the interface has been redesigned to:

• Improve navigation by organizing the menus in a more logical way.

• Simplify everyday tasks such as adding products, tracking orders, or managing returns.

• Make the experience more intuitive for non-technical teams, thereby reducing the need for training.

One example mentioned during the conference that we find particularly telling: a client company reported a 30% time savings for its sales team in the day-to-day management of orders thanks to this overhaul. Not bad!

Payments that are easier to manage

Sylius 2.0 also makes it easier to integrate with online payment systems. This includes:

• Enhanced compatibility with popular solutions such as Stripe, PayPal, and Mollie.

• Simplified configurations for managing multiple currencies and geographic regions without the need for custom development.

For companies that operate internationally, this saves a significant amount of time, particularly when it comes to responding quickly to new requirements in local markets.

Technical Conferences: Tools for Your Projects

The technical presentations were particularly relevant; here is a brief summary of a few that particularly interested us:

Build world-class Sylius plugins.

A summary of best practices to follow throughout the development of a plugin for Sylius.

For example: prioritize automatically importing the configuration when installing the plugin, use your own entities rather than extending Sylius’s, and don’t neglect any type of testing.

(By Joachim Lovgaard)

An Overview of Sylius Payments and the Future Outlook.

WordPress powers many websites worldwide. After evaluating the existing setup and the limitations associated with integrating Payum, Sylius 2.0 introduced the concept of “Payment Requests.” This new approach aims to simplify the integration of payment providers, both on the backend and frontend. It also offers the ability to process payments completely asynchronously for payment methods that support this feature.

(By Francis Hilaire)

Adapt pricing calculations to the needs of B2B

Unlike B2C, where prices are uniform or standardized for all users with promotions managed at the shopping cart level, B2B is characterized by pricing specific to each user or segment, defined by numerous—and sometimes highly complex—business rules.

With Sylius, there are three main approaches to managing prices in B2B:

1. Price calculation via the ERP system using an API call, which requires high availability.
2. Pre-calculating prices for all use cases or users—a method that requires significant storage capacity and substantial computing resources if adjustments are needed.
3. Real-time calculation, which involves replicating the ERP’s calculation rules, with the potential risk of data misalignment.

It was this third and final approach that was highlighted and technically demonstrated during an implementation in Sylius by the two speakers from Webgriffe. An interesting use case…!

(By Luca Gallinari & Manuele Menozzi)

Designing an open-source product discovery solution

Introducing Gally, an open-source, turnkey solution for “product discovery.” The solution combines a winning trio of Elasticsearch, GraphQL, and Symfony—and, as the icing on the cake, it even includes semantic search. This solution completely reimagines product search in a more advanced way and makes it easy to integrate with any headless system.

(By Romain Ruaud)

Boost Your Sylius Applications and Simplify Their Deployment with FrankenPHP

Introduction to FrankenPHP, a new all-in-one tool that makes it easy to set up a PHP server while adding new features and improving performance. Sounds interesting!

(By Kévin Dunglas)

Get ready for Black Friday: optimize, upgrade, and stress-test your Sylius app

A closer look at the strategies to implement to prepare an e-commerce site to handle traffic spikes. This is especially relevant with Black Friday just around the corner!

That’s how Blackfire was presented to us: a tool for monitoring code performance, as well as solutions for conducting load testing.

(By Thomas Di Luccio)

Beyond the Universal Model: Maximizing User Value Through Profiling and an Adaptive Architecture

A presentation on how Freshful uses Sylius to offer customized e-commerce solutions for the food industry, leveraging user profiling and a modular architecture to enhance the customer experience and boost customer engagement.

(By Viorel Tudor)

Create a Semantic Search Experience with PHP and Meilisearch

The story behind the creation of a semantic search experience using PHP and Meilisearch, made possible by leveraging the latest advances in machine learning and search engine technologies to improve the accuracy of results and the user experience.

(By Guillaume Loulier)

What we take away from this…

This third edition of SyliusCon 2024 was a huge success!

A comprehensive overview for businesses and developers interested in a flexible, modular solution. Rather than abstract discussions, the presentations and case studies demonstrated how Sylius can address real-world challenges, whether it’s simplifying the management of technical projects, improving the user experience, or optimizing business processes.

If you’re planning to launch a new e-commerce project or migrate your current infrastructure, the new features in Sylius 2.0 and the case studies presented at this event are worth taking a closer look at.

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