Self managed themes in Magnolia for IOT: three brand sites published without development

IOT is an optical retail group running five brands on a single Magnolia instance, in production for years. The platform was mature and working; what did not scale was adding brands.

When a brand's visual identity lives in the code, every new site is a development project, and the group's speed gets tied to whoever writes it.

For a leadership team planning launches, that turns a commercial decision into a technical dependency.

• One build per brand: changing colors, typography and layout meant touching code and deploying.
• Marketing without autonomy: the team could load content but could not define how its brand looked.
• Limited component library: what existed was not enough to express distinct visual identities without building new pieces.

The real cost was not one site's development but every following one, and every launch joining another team's queue.

We extended the front end component library and built a Themes application inside Magnolia, so each brand's visual identity becomes configuration instead of code.

We already had the multibrand theming pattern running on our own platform. What we built for IOT is that same concept implemented to fit their components and their CSS, not a generic template.

A Themes app inside the CMS

• Custom module that exposes each brand's visual configuration as a theme editable from the back office.
• Fitted to IOT's existing components and CSS, which is exactly what a generic builder cannot do.
• Each brand picks its theme without affecting any other brand on the instance.

More components, so brands can actually differ

• Front end library extended with the pieces needed to carry distinct identities.
• Page composition resolved by configuration, with no deploy per variant.

Marketing publishes on its own

• The team built and published the go live of three brand sites without IT and without Habito 1.
• Three self managed themes, coexisting with the brands already on the instance.

Architecture and technology

• Magnolia CMS on a non headless instance, with five brands in production.
• Custom Themes application, built as a dedicated module.
• Front end component library extended over the client's design system.

Learn more about design systems and theming in Magnolia.

Learn more about software development.

Three brand sites reached production published by the marketing team itself, with no development in the loop.

Starting point

• Five brands in production on a mature instance, with visual identity resolved in code.
• Every new brand required a development project and a deploy.

Results

• Three brand sites created and published at go live by the marketing team, with no IT and no Habito 1 involvement.
• Three distinct themes self managed from the back office.
• One of those sites went from node created to published version in 19 calendar days, with no development involved.

Strategic impact

• Launching a brand stopped being a technical project and became a marketing task.
• The group stopped paying for a build with every new brand.