December 2021: Preparing for 2.4.4

December 2021 was a purposeful pause before one of the most consequential upgrades in recent years. With 2.4.4 arriving in April 2022, teams used the quieter month to prepare for PHP 8.1 support, OpenSearch adoption and deep security hardening. Treating December as a planning window pays dividends: you reduce uncertainty, de-risk deployment, and align stakeholders before work begins.

Preparation starts with a truthful inventory. Catalogue all custom modules and extensions, including versions, vendors and known issues. Vendor-bundled extensions (VBEs) were slated for removal in 2.4.4 (Braintree excepted), so confirm Marketplace replacements, upgrade paths and support SLAs. Where extensions overlap, use this opportunity to consolidate on a single, supported solution to simplify future maintenance.

Next, benchmark the platform. Capture baseline metrics for build time, Lighthouse scores, API latency and peak behaviour, so you can prove the benefits of PHP 8.1 and platform improvements. In the same breath, set expectations: some gains are immediate; others require small refactors to fully exploit new capabilities.

Create a rehearsal plan. Build a disposable branch, enable PHP 8.1 in CI and spin a short-lived test environment. Run smoke tests for checkout, payments, shipping rates and customer account flows. If you operate headless journeys, include GraphQL smoke tests too. Use your findings to size the effort and identify code hot spots (for example, any direct session reads that must be removed for 2.4.4).

Preparation checklist:

• Hosting readiness: confirm PHP 8.1 images and OpenSearch support; adjust resources and JVM settings where required.
• Extension plan: map every module to a supported path; remove dead code and avoid quick fixes that will increase long-term cost.
• Data and content: refresh staging data and media; anonymise customer records and clean test accounts.
• Change calendar: schedule maintenance windows; align internal teams and agencies around dates, rollbacks and responsibilities.

December-level discipline is what turns a large technical change into predictable business value. Go in with a plan, exit with momentum.