Magento 2 Code Audit: Ensuring Stability, Speed, and Security of Your Store

Maintaining a secure, high-performing, and reliable online store is essential for any business. For companies using Magento 2, a code audit is your first line of defense against security threats, sluggish load times, and unpredictable crashes. 

At Elogic, Magento/Adobe Commerce migrations, upgrades, and audits are our bread and butter. As a certified Adobe Solution Partner, we’ve helped hundreds of Magento merchants find bottlenecks in their store performance and address them long before they become major issues. 

In this guide, we’ll explore how a Magento 2 code audit can help you enhance your store’s stability, speed, and security, providing a smooth shopping experience for your customers and continuity for your business. 

What Is a Code Audit and Why Does Your Business Need It?

A Magento code audit is a detailed evaluation of your website’s codebase to assess its quality, security, and performance. As you add new features and perform updates, your Magento code can become cluttered with redundant or outdated elements. This can lead to slower website performance, increased security risks, and compatibility issues. These problems don’t just affect your website — they can disrupt your business operations and hurt revenue.

Slow-loading pages increase bounce rates and lead to lower conversions. Akamai discovered that even a one-second delay in page load time can result in a 7% drop in conversions and 11% fewer page views. A code audit helps identify unnecessary processes, redundant queries, and inefficient scripts that could be slowing down your site.

Security is another critical factor for performing regular audits. According to the Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report, nearly 46% of cyberattacks worldwide target small businesses, including ecommerce platforms. Magento 2 websites that run on outdated extensions or misconfigured settings become tempting targets for cybercriminals. A thorough Magento 2 code audit uncovers vulnerabilities such as SQL injections and cross-site scripting, allowing businesses to mitigate cybersecurity risks before they escalate.

Ensuring stability and scalability is another major reason for performing a Magento audit. Frequent crashes, checkout failures, and unexpected downtimes can drive customers away and damage a brand’s reputation (large ecommerce businesses can lose up to $500,000 per hour due to site outages). Well-optimized Magento stores can handle up to 10x more traffic without performance degradation.

In fact, this is exactly what happened to Benum, our Norwegian client and a consumer electronics wholesaler. As new technologies—ERP, custom logic, and complex modules—layered up, Magento website performance started to slow down. After the audit, they’ve experienced x6 faster website performance!

→ Click to read the complete success story of Magento performance optimization for Benum.

Common Code Quality Issues in Magento

Following coding standards and best practices is essential for smooth updates and integrations. Adhering to Magento-specific guidelines ensures compatibility with the platform’s architecture, while PHP Standard Recommendations (PSR) provide consistency across projects. 

Tools like PHPStorm integrate quality enforcement mechanisms such as PHP Code Sniffer (PHPCS) and PHP Mess Detector (PHPMD) to help developers write clean code.

When developers don’t follow these practices,  this can lead to substantial code quality problems.

Magento developers often encounter recurring problems that compromise site performance and security. One major issue is code redundancy — repeating the same code unnecessarily instead of using reusable functions. 

Developers also sometimes resort to using core PHP functions like cURL or json_encode directly instead of Magento’s built-in alternatives, which can lead to inefficiencies.

Another common problem involves raw SQL queries. Direct SQL queries not only slow down performance but also increase security risks, such as SQL injection attacks. Similarly, running SQL queries inside loops can significantly degrade site speed – using repositories instead is a better practice.

Addressing these issues through regular audits guarantees that your site remains optimized for both users and administrators.

Key Components of a Magento 2 Code Audit

A Magento 2 code audit is a comprehensive assessment of your website’s core functionalities. This process can be subdivided into the following key steps:

Security audit (aka Magento security audit)

Magento security audit verifies whether your store is protected against potential threats. This process involves scanning for vulnerabilities such as SQL injections, cross-site scripting (XSS), and unauthorized admin access that hackers often exploit. 

It also checks whether all security patches have been properly implemented to shield your website from known risks. Outdated Magento security extensions can also pose significant threats, and an audit helps identify these risks, ensuring that only secure and up-to-date modules are in use.

Performance optimization (aka Magento site audit)

Magento site audit detects pages that take too long to load and pinpoints inefficient database queries that may be slowing down site operations. It also examines the caching configurations to make sure that they are set up correctly for optimal performance. 

Third-party extensions often contribute to performance issues, and Magento performance testing assesses their impact, helping to determine whether they are necessary or if better alternatives exist.

Code quality review (aka Magento technical audit)

Magento 2 technical audit evaluates whether your website follows Magento best practices and coding standards, making sure your ecommerce architecture is logical and easy to maintain. This part of the audit detects unnecessary code bloat slowing down your website and identifies areas where you can enhance scalability. By keeping the codebase clean, you benefit from smoother updates and a more manageable development process.

Extension & integration analysis

Magento websites often rely on multiple extensions and third-party integrations to enhance functionality. However, poorly optimized or conflicting Magento extensions can lead to security risks and performance issues. 

An extension and integration analysis reviews all installed extensions to spot potential security vulnerabilities and inefficiencies. It also checks for conflicts between different modules that may be causing instability in the store. Additionally, the audit evaluates API connections and third-party service integrations to ensure seamless communication between the store and external platforms.

Database optimization

The efficiency of a Magento store largely depends on how well its database is structured and optimized. A database optimization audit analyzes slow queries that may be causing bottlenecks in site performance. It also focuses on optimizing indexing and caching mechanisms to ensure that data retrieval is as fast as possible. 

By reducing redundant data storage and improving query execution times, businesses can significantly enhance the overall speed and responsiveness of their Magento 2 store.

Frontend & backend functionality review

A Magento code audit also assesses whether key functionalities such as navigation, checkout, and search operate smoothly without errors. On the frontend, it looks for rendering issues that may affect user experience, such as broken layouts or slow-loading elements. Meanwhile, on the backend, the audit reviews processes to guarantee efficiency and reliability, making sure that store operations run without interruptions.

How Elogic Conducts a Comprehensive Magento Code Audit

With over 14 years in the market and more than 500 successful projects, Elogic stands out as an expert in Magento and takes a comprehensive approach to auditing Magento stores.

Step 1: Preliminary analysis

Our code audit process begins with an in-depth review to identify your pain points. This involves gathering data on website performance metrics, existing integrations, and customer feedback. A business analyst takes part in the process besides engineers to make sure your requirements are heard and accurately translated into technical specifications.

Step 2: Security review

During the security review phase, Elogic finds such vulnerabilities as outdated extensions or weak authentication mechanisms while ensuring compliance with PCI DSS standards—a critical requirement for ecommerce businesses handling sensitive payment information.

Step 3: Performance optimization

Performance optimization follows next. We thoroughly evaluate your database queries, optimize caching mechanisms, and reduce server load through efficient resource management techniques.

Step 4: Code integrity and quality review

The audit also includes a review of code integrity to ensure that your core files remain untouched for compatibility with future updates. We analyze third-party extensions for adherence to coding standards. During the code quality review, we refactor redundant or poorly written code according to the Magento best practices.

Step 5: Database optimization 

Another vital component is database optimization. We remove redundant data entries while enhancing indexing strategies for faster query response times. Finally, Elogic provides clients with a detailed report highlighting identified issues along with actionable recommendations for improvement.

Magento code audit tools & techniques used by Elogic

Elogic employs such tools to evaluate the quality of Magento codebases effectively:

• PHP Code Sniffer & PHPMD to detect violations of coding standards.
• SonarLint & SonarCloud to assess code quality.
• Git Pre-Commit Hooks to run tests before allowing our developers to push changes to repositories, thus preventing errors from reaching production environments.
• Automated testing like PHPUnit to provide unit-level functionality and Selenium tests to guarantee smooth user interactions on the frontend.

Before the Magento code audit, Whola, our Australian client and a fashion marketplace, had their website page loading speed vary between stalling 12 and 20 seconds. After reviewing the code, they reduced it by 5(!) times. 

→ See the full case study of Magento code audit for Whola following the link.

Summing up

Magento stores require regular code audits to maintain optimal performance, security, and scalability. By investing in comprehensive audits tailored specifically for Magento 2 environments, businesses can mitigate risks associated with downtime or poor performance.

Don’t wait for an issue to disrupt your business — schedule a Magento audit today and ensure your store operates at peak efficiency. 

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