Custom WordPress Multisite Development with Timber, ACF, and Algolia

I’ve been deeply involved in the ongoing development and maintenance of a custom WordPress theme built with Timber and Twig on a large-scale multisite network spanning 50+ subsites. This work blends advanced theme architecture with plugin development, CLI tooling, and modern search indexing.

Highlights of my contributions:

• Advanced Theme Architecture: Built and maintained a modular Timber-based theme using the Twig templating engine. Created custom page templates, components, and layout structures optimized for performance and reusability across multiple subsites.
• ACF Field Management via PHP: Programmatically registered and loaded ACF fields to power custom Gutenberg blocks without exposing them in the admin UI. Built dynamic field loaders to pull taxonomy terms and post data from across the multisite network using switch_to_blog() for use in select fields and page logic.
• Custom Gutenberg Block Development: Created and extended reusable blocks with tailored ACF configurations, integrating seamlessly with Twig views and the frontend UI.
• Custom Post Types & Data Modeling: Registered new post types (e.g., student, faculty, person, project) to support site initiatives and built custom taxonomy relationships. Integrated these post types into the theme’s search, display, and indexing systems.
• Algolia Integration: Helped extend and maintain a bespoke plugin that interfaces with the Algolia Search API using the official PHP client. Key responsibilities include:
  • Building and debugging serialization logic for post types, supporting rich relationships, taxonomies, and metadata.
  • Creating new WP-CLI commands and enhancing the command set. Authored the reindex_people() command to isolate and reindex select datasets.
  • Ensured data compliance with evolving Algolia index schemas by updating local JSON configuration files for settings, rules, and synonyms.
  • Resolved emergency issues related to missing data in search indexes by developing and running targeted indexing scripts.
• Search Architecture & UX: Collaborated on building a rich, faceted search interface for a Pathways landing page using Algolia’s InstantSearch.js. Integrated client-side search refinement widgets with ACF-powered backend fields to deliver dynamic filtering across dimensions like department, research center, and degree.
• DevOps & Performance: Worked with WP-CLI and custom bash scripts to manage data indexing, batch updates, and cron-driven indexing events. Frequently debugged cross-site data propagation, search syncing failures, and plugin compatibility issues in a high-traffic environment.

Tech Stack: PHP, Timber/Twig, Advanced Custom Fields (ACF), Gutenberg, JavaScript, WP-CLI, Algolia API, WordPress Multisite, Git, Webpack.