Six weeks to Black Friday: the Adobe Commerce checks that still matter

Black Friday falls on 27 November this year. Ideally, peak preparation for Adobe Commerce starts eight weeks out, with two or three full load-test cycles. If you're reading this with less time than that, you can still lower your risk a lot. You just have to prioritise.

Priority 1: patch the platform before the freeze

Get the security work done before your change freeze, not during it. That includes the latest Adobe Commerce security patch and, this year in particular, the PHP runtime update for the PHP2Shell vulnerabilities. A store that is still exposed when the freeze starts stays exposed through its busiest weeks of the year.

Priority 2: one realistic load test

If there's only time for one test, make it a checkout test. Catalogue pages are usually protected by Varnish. Checkout is not, and it's where database connection exhaustion and payment gateway timeouts appear first. Model concurrent checkouts at last year's peak conversion rate plus a margin, and watch the database connection count as closely as response times.

Priority 3: find the cache bypasses

• Blocks added since last peak that set a no-cache header (stock badges, personalised banners, countdown timers)
• Third-party scripts added by marketing that force dynamic rendering
• Promotion landing pages built in Page Builder with uncached widgets
• Faceted navigation URLs being crawled by bots and skipping the full-page cache

What to freeze, and what not to

Freeze extension updates, theme changes and infrastructure changes from mid-November. Don't freeze content, pricing or promotions. Merchandising teams need to keep working, so make sure they can do it through the admin without a deployment. Agree with the business in advance on who can approve an emergency change during the freeze and how it gets tested.