XS Instruments Multisite

Chapter 1

The group

Chapter 2

The challenge

Four separate sites mean, in the traditional model, four times the work: duplicated content, misaligned prices, independent development, multiplied maintenance costs. The challenge was to preserve the separate brand identities while keeping a single machine behind the scenes.

• Four brands with overlapping catalogs

  The same product can be sold by multiple brands with different descriptions, or be exclusive to one brand.

• Completely different visual identities

  Four logos, four palettes, four tones of voice. They must look like four different companies to the visitor.

• Languages for each market

  IT/EN active on all brands, DE/FR/ES on roadmap. Each language must be independent per brand.

• Significant volumes

  Tens of thousands of products possible in the PIM — the client decides which to publish and on which brands.

• Sustainable maintenance

  Updates to the CMS, e-commerce platform and frontend must be done only once for all brands.

Chapter 3

One platform, four identities

Multisite architecture on a single installation: one CMS, one database, one backend. Four completely separate frontend themes — one per brand — sharing data but not visual identity.

The backend has eight site definitions (4 brands × 2 languages: Italian and English). The system automatically recognizes which site is being served and applies the correct theme, categories and language. To the visitor, the four sites look completely independent.

Chapter 4

A catalog that updates itself

The product catalog is unique, kept in the PIM (OnPage). Every element — products, technical sheets, images, translations — has an "online per brand" field: the client decides directly on the PIM which product to publish on which site, with no developer intervention needed.

The automatic sync reads the PIM, recognizes the flags for each brand, and populates each site with its catalog in its language. The same product can be visible on two brands at once with different descriptions, or be exclusive to one brand.

Chapter 5

Tailored categories for each brand

On the PIM, categories are organized in a deep hierarchy — Categories → Subcategories → Sections → Products — designed for maximum technical granularity.

Each brand, however, has different navigation needs: a multi-product brand like ArgoLab needs a classic hierarchical tree with technical filters by type; a specialized brand like Neya (centrifuges) or Onda (spectrophotometers) needs a flat tree, organized by use category. The sync automatically adapts the PIM tree to the optimal tree for each brand.

Chapter 6

Always-aligned images

Thousands of product images on the PIM, distributed across four sites. Re-downloading them all every night would be wasteful and expensive. The system uses a token mechanism to recognize what has changed.

Chapter 7

Mall customization

OFFLINE.Mall is the open-source e-commerce platform that powers the store of all four brands. It's born as a single-site engine: to properly handle brand separation, a custom WaveStaq plugin was developed that extends Mall with the concept of "group".

Every product, every category, every search index is tagged with the brand it belongs to. Backend editors see only the products of their brand, avoiding cross-publishing errors. The structure is backward-compatible: if the plugin is disabled tomorrow, Mall continues to work normally.

Chapter 8

Isolated multisite search

Each site has its own search bar, placed in the header with an expandable icon. It searches by product name and item code (SKU), with autocomplete showing the first five results as you type and a full results page with paginator.

The search is natively multilingual (searches in the current site's language) and isolated per brand: if you search a term on the ArgoLab site, you only see ArgoLab products — even if the same term exists in another brand's catalog. No confusion, no leaks.

Chapter 9

Native multilingual per brand

Eight site definitions on the backend: four brands × two languages (Italian and English), all active on all sites. German, French and Spanish are on the roadmap for the 2026 expansion.

Technical content translations (product names, descriptions, technical sheets) come from the PIM and are synced together with the catalog. Correct multilingual SEO with hreflang tags specific per brand/language pair: search engines understand that xsinstruments.com/it and xsinstruments.com/en are different versions of the same page, while argo-lab.com/it is completely independent.

Chapter 10

Results

Tangible numbers from the multisite architecture in production.

Client autonomy is the real result: they manage thousands of products, publish and hide them on individual brands, update images and translations — all directly from the PIM, without having to open a ticket or wait for a developer.

Chapter 11

Testimonial

Chapter 12

Tech stack

An overview of the main technologies. I work with any PIM and ERP — OnPage, Akeneo, Pimcore, Salsify and other product information management systems.