The Pavilion theme has been updated to version 2.0 with huge feature additions and improvements. It is now based on BurnEngine, which is our new base platform for developing OpenCart themes.

We plan to release our next themes (the first one is Kiddos) based on this new platform. The most important benefit from this move is the shared codebase between all of the themes – they will receive bug fixes and feature additions at once. Every BurnEngine compatible theme will get regular updates, regardless of its initial release date, so your theme will have always the latest patches. Also, any compatible extension will work with an arbitrary BurnEngine theme without modifications. No more questions like ‘will xxx extension work with your next theme’.

Together with the above mentioned advantages, you will get a bunch of new features when upgrading to BurnEngine/Pavilion2. We will list the most significant ones only, as under-the-hood improvements are countless.

User features:

- Improved layout system
- Menu manager – create menu instances and use them all over your content.
- Drag & Drop header builder – you can create custom site headers by using the familiar block builder.
- Drag & drop product layout builder – no more restrictions of how your product page layout will look. You can now reorder its elements according to your taste.
- Content builder templates – you can now save your custom layout as template and apply it to other pages. No need to recreate it every time from scratch.
- Import/Export of theme options – easily transfer your current theme modifications to another store.
- Change themes and skins from the admin panel – you can make custom skins and save them.
- OpenCart performance extension – adds Database cache and patches some of the OpenCart’s weak points in order to improve them. According to our test, with this extension enabled, your shop will be faster than default OpenCart installation.
- SEO pack extension – we decided to incorporate the missing OpenCart SEO functionality right into BurnEngine. Among its options are multilingual keyword, languages prefixes, google microdata, facebook opengraph, twitter card, keyword editor and generator etc.
- Newsletter extension
- Custom Product Fields (Tabs) extension
- Live Search extension
- Also Bought Products block
- Recently Viewed Products block
- Most Viewed Products block
- Random Products block
- Product Slider Block

Technical features:

- OpenCart 2.2.0.0 compatibility
- Twitter Bootstrap 3.3 – the templates use the bootstrap markup and styles, so any bootstrap module should look nice with our themes
- Overhauled responsive functionality – hundreds of bug fixes and improvements on mobile devices

It is recommended to make a new OpenCart installation, but you are also able to upgrade your existing shop to Pavilion 2.

Here are the upgrade steps:
- upload the package contents to the root folder of your store
- enter the admin panel and install the BurnEngine module
- change template to BurnEngine from System > Settings > Store
- you will be prompted to upgrade your store – choose your design and wait until the process is finished

Please, have in mind that upgrade cannot fully transfer all your theme settings from Pavilion to BurnEngine. You may need to additionally fine tune some of your styles. Although you won’t loose any data, be sure you have a recent backup, before you go through the upgrade process.