The Client: Industrial Excellence
Comer S.p.A. has been a leader in thermoplastic fittings and valves since 1978. With 25,000 sqm of production and 7 million items in stock, it serves critical sectors like hydraulics and marine. The goal was to build a high-performance digital ecosystem reflecting Italian logistical reliability and precision.
The Challenge: Overcoming Technical Debt
The project addressed heavy technical debt. The old site used an unoptimized WooCommerce and WP Bakery, limiting speed and maintainability. The challenge was creating a segmented experience to show sensitive data only to specific users while maintaining sync with the corporate ERP.
The Stack: Custom Understrap Development
To ensure lightweight modularity, I developed a fully custom theme based on Understrap (Bootstrap 5). This “code-first” approach allowed us to ditch heavy plugins for a clean architecture, ensuring high performance and a solid foundation for future B2B portal evolutions.
Data Migration & Sanitization
Moving away from WooCommerce, I migrated products to Custom Post Types. Massive database sanitization was required to remove residual WP Bakery shortcodes. Data was normalized to ensure a clean structure, which is essential for performance and correct indexing.
New Data Architecture
The new architecture relies on ACF fields and native Gutenberg blocks. This allowed for granular technical information structuring. The transition drastically improved load times, offering the administrator an intuitive backend for content management without dirty code.
Multi-Level User Management
The system manages a public area and a two-tier restricted zone, integrated with the ERP. The infrastructure verifies client status in real-time, differentiating access between anonymous visitors, basic users, and certified partners to guarantee the security of sensitive industrial data.
Conditional Rendering
The main complexity lies in dynamic product sheets. The system detects user levels and generates differentiated technical tables on the same URL. A partner sees tolerances and details hidden from basic users, optimizing content management without duplicating pages.
Dashboard & Smart Search
The user dashboard features a step-by-step search engine to guide component selection. The algorithm combines automatic taxonomy criteria with manually defined priority keywords. This hybrid system ensures maximum precision in finding the right product among thousands of references.
Document Automation (PDF)
The download area is autonomous and secure. I implemented “on-the-fly” PDF generation: the system automatically compiles technical sheets by pulling real-time text and images from the database. This eliminates manual layout tasks and ensures downloaded documents are always up to date.
Results & Performance
The new portal is a powerful B2B tool. Thanks to the custom Mega Menu and the removal of obsolete plugins, navigation is immediate. The custom approach returned a fast, secure platform to the client, perfectly aligned with industrial logistical flows and ready for future scalability.
