Beside many new features like a WYSIWYG editor, extended PayPal handling and Widgets, I was interested much more in the SEO improvements.

Since I didn’t install the great seo-optimized Magento theme by Yoast, because I started with extending the modern theme delivered by Magento guys, I was very happy about the SEO improvements in the new release candidate. I was swearing myself to have not installed it before starting to create a new theme. Nevertheless, the theme by Yoast showed me how to use appropriate headings in the html code.

It seems that Magento designers took the theme by Yoast and put it into the default templates of the new release which poses the question “Do we need the Yoast theme any more?”. In my opinion and after I saw the changes in Magento, we don’t need it anymore as a basic theme which we build other themes on.

I hope, Joost de Valk posts a comment about the new RC on his site soon.