All changes included in the new version Opencart 4. After several years in beta form and with hundreds of additions, it is now close to us in a stable version.

It includes very important corrections to security issues, with even better support for new techniques to protect the system and compliance with the law for the personal data of all users.

Most of the changes have been made in places that are not visible to the end user and focus on better overall experience of both the administrator and the client.

What are the main changes?

• The well-known and functional text editor CKEDITOR has returned without the need to install an external plugin.

• The basic settings of the system have been greatly simplified, while the radio buttons have been removed almost everywhere and replaced by dropdown menus, which are better organized and understandable.

• Very important change, that all external plugins are in external folder organized and outside the main Opencart 4 folders.
• Direct update to newer version, from management.

• Built GDPR personal data control functionality into its core Opencart 4, and the use of an external plugin is not required in this case either.

• An important change is the ability to add a variant of a product, which will automatically be based on the parent product and can have unified quantities for parts. Of course it will be able to have independent information or simply use automatically from the parent product.

• Ability to add cron jobs (tasks that run automatically – for example the update from some xml of your supplier) directly from the Opencart 4 environment. It can be useful if the server you are on does not support more than such a process.

Technical changes

• – PHP 8.1+ compatibility
• – New event based extension system
• – Start page
• – Page for CRON jobs
• – GDPR compliance
• – Product variants that are based on parent products and share common information
• – Cookie acceptance system, integrated without the use of an add-on
• – Direct update to management, for all the latest Opencart news and updates
• – Autoloader class
• – The phone field at checkout is not required by default
• – Additional safeguards for administration, such as the ability to rename it and use another folder besides admin

They were informed

• – Bootstrap 5
• – jQuery v3.6.0
• – Font Awesome 6
• – CKEditor 5
• -Rename order_recurring to subscription system.
• – Sliding buttons instead of checkboxes
• – All forms use AJAX technology, no need to manually save every change
• – New installation system of Opencart 4
• – Ability to update to a newer version directly from management
• – Reporting system
• – Admin notifications
• – The backup process stores the database in parts to avoid crashing when it is too large
• – Order processing has been improved in many places and the api is no longer required, which caused many bugs in older versions