Facile.it is a premier online price comparison platform in Italy that showcases a range of brands. It enables consumers to evaluate the costs of insurance products, utilities, and financial services. The client sought a clear and adaptable content management solution to handle all its brands within a unified framework. Strapi, the headless CMS at the heart of their multichannel approach, lacks built-in support for multi-domain hosting. To address this, VirtusLab developed a custom multi-domain plugin for the Italian brokerage firm. It resulted in a strong, customized editorial dashboard and domain-driven data models designed for a streamlined and personalized user experience.
The challenge
Our client managed a substantial volume of custom code to integrate with their business infrastructure. Deploying and customizing a multi-domain plugin represents a complex engineering effort to align with our client’s requirements and business model. The Italian brokerage adheres to stringent legal and organizational security policies and guidelines to protect data. Consequently, they needed a partner to meet their needs on different levels. Facile.it partnered with VirtusLab, an ISO 27001 certified service provider, drawing on their extensive experience in the Strapi plugin ecosystem and their expertise in creating highly tailored extensions.
The solution
VirtusLab delivered core multi-domain plugin functionality, which was then customized to meet specific client requirements. Critical enhancements included:
- Multi-Level RBAC: Building on Strapi’s default role-based access control (RBAC), VirtusLab integrated with a sophisticated client-specific multi-level RBAC system to provide granular control over user permissions.
- Custom Content API readiness: A bespoke tooling dedicated to Content API. Tailored to the client’s unique data handling needs.
- Enhanced Media Library: We customized the Media Library functionality for better alignment with our client’s content management processes.
We engineered the plugin to harmonize with our client’s tight security protocols, guided by VirtusLab’s adherence to ISO 27001 certificate standards. This compliance ensured seamless integration with Facile. It’s existing security policies and guidelines, which are critical for insurance companies in their day-to-day operations.
“VirtusLab engineers are truly Strapi extensions experts. Their knowledge and expertise in the realm of Strapi plugins have empowered us to create an excellent solution for our multi-brand CMS implementation.”
Leornardo Podda
The results
Alongside a customized Strapi editorial dashboard and personalized domain-driven data structures, the partnership delivered several key achievements:
- Effortless Activation and Deactivation: Facile.it now toggles the highly customized extension on or off without affecting Strapi’s essential functions. We implemented any required changes to the core as detachable patches, preserving the integrity of Strapi.
- Improved Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) and Relationship Management: Leveraging Strapi’s native capabilities, the plugin streamlined access governance and content delegation, rendering these operations more flexible and intuitive.
- Virtual Context for Clarity: A virtual interface context was crucial to the multi-domain strategy, ensuring consistent and clear management of entities, irrespective of the number of divisions an editor handles.
- Commitment to Quality Assurance: The plugin’s development prioritized quality, integrating TypeScript, unit testing, and end-to-end (E2E) testing to ensure a seamless development experience.