Themes
Multi-brand design system
for a leading US media company
Senior engineer for 5+ years on a shared design system for 20+ media brands on WordPress VIP: built it, redesigned 10+ sites on it, then moved the brands to its React-based successor.
- WordPress VIP
- Design system
- React
- Gutenberg
- REST API
- Piano
- Paywall
Challenge & my role
Each brand rebuilt the same components again and again, and the designs drifted apart. Over 20 brands needed one shared system, with each brand still free to change its own CSS and layout.
Senior software engineer and design system developer
- Key developer of the first design system from 2019: planned its components and built the shared templates.
- Configured the backend with the shared components, so repeated work is done once and each brand only configures its site.
- Redesigned and migrated more than 10 brand sites, each a custom WordPress theme, to the shared design system.
- Took part in the React-based successor, transpiled to PHP with schema validation, and migrated the brands from the first system to it.
- Created paywall templates in the Piano dashboard and displayed them on each brand's site, so readers can subscribe and see the content.
- Built plugin features for all brands to WordPress VIP coding standards: REST API and the Gutenberg React Context API.
Themes
News website redesign and team training
for a leading Indian news publisher
Redesigned a high-traffic news site from scratch for WordPress VIP, built for performance, SEO and AMP. On site for 3 months, trained the client's 5 engineers, who now review their own VIP code.
- WordPress
- WordPress VIP
- PHP
- AMP
- UI/UX
- Performance
- SEO
Challenge & my role
A high-traffic news website needed a completely new design, built for WordPress VIP, performance, SEO and mobile. The client's own engineering team also had to be able to keep developing it alone once the contract ended.
Senior WordPress engineer and trainer
- Redesigned the website's UI and UX from scratch, built for performance and compatible with WordPress VIP classic.
- Handled all the SEO configuration and worked on making the site AMP compatible for mobile.
- Deployed the redesigned site to WordPress VIP classic, working on site with the client's team for 3 months.
- Trained the client's 5 engineers from the basics across frontend, backend, PHP, CSS and WordPress VIP.
- Led the training on plugin and theme development, WordPress and coding standards and the deployment flow, so the team could carry on alone.
APIs & React✦ AI-assisted
AI chatbot plugin
for a leading US media company
Built the frontend, access logic and API integration of a streaming AI chatbot plugin for a publisher's WordPress VIP sites, starting from an empty plugin. The AI backend came from other teams.
- WordPress VIP
- React
- TypeScript
- PHP
- Server-Sent Events
- Piano
- AWS
Challenge & my role
Readers needed to ask questions in plain language and get answers drawn from the brand's own articles and archive, with sources. It had to stream in real time, respect the paywall and work on every brand's site.
Senior software engineer
- Designed the plugin: namespaced PHP (REST endpoints, settings, services) and a React and TypeScript widget built with @wordpress/scripts.
- Integrated the AI backend via a signed JWT and a nonce-protected token flow, with WordPress out of streaming.
- Built real-time streaming chat over Server-Sent Events: a custom SSE parser, sanitized Markdown, inline citations and pre-signed S3 links.
- Built the Piano paywall and access logic: a free-question limit, a fail-closed timeout and an error path for EU readers who decline consent.
- Shipped the subscriber-only expanded chat: sidebar, saved history loaded page by page, delete, a mobile drawer and cross-visit sessions.
- Made the plugin reusable across brands: theme colors via CSS custom properties, per-site admin settings and translatable, overridable text.
- Set up the first JavaScript test suite (Jest, React Testing Library) at 100% coverage, with request timeouts and readable error messages.
How AI helped: Used AI heavily to build the plugin in a short time. The chatbot itself streams AI answers with citations to the brand's articles.
Themes
One full site editing theme for a news network
for a leading Indian news publisher
Built a single full site editing theme with custom templates and a customised live blog plugin, used across several state-wise news sites on one multisite network.
- WordPress
- Full site editing
- Gutenberg
- React
- Redux
- Multisite
- PHP
Challenge & my role
The publisher needed state-wise news sites, each with its own news, to run on one design. Full site editing was still experimental and barely documented, so it had to be learned from the Gutenberg code up.
Senior WordPress engineer
- Built one theme on full site editing, with custom templates, shared by every news site on the network.
- Learned full site editing from the Gutenberg plugin code up, while it was still experimental and barely documented.
- Customised an existing live blog plugin for live news coverage, adding new features, in React and Redux.
- Made the same theme work across a multisite network, with each state site keeping its own news.
Migrations✦ AI-assisted
Newsletter and alert platform migration
for a leading US media company
Moved a media company's newsletters and breaking news alerts from Salesforce to Zeta across 20+ brands, with a reusable migration toolkit and self-serve admin controls.
- WordPress
- Zeta
- Salesforce
- Email
- Migrations
Challenge & my role
More than 1000 newsletter and alert templates lived in Salesforce, in a different syntax from Zeta. They had to move without editorial teams losing a single send, and setup, scheduling, sending and sign-ups had to be rebuilt.
Senior software engineer
- Worked on the migration toolkit: scripts that pull templates from Salesforce, convert them for Zeta, handle images and push them live.
- Migrated newsletters and breaking news alerts brand by brand, which also surfaced template inconsistencies nobody knew about.
- Rebuilt how newsletters are configured, scheduled and sent, how alerts go out and how sign-ups are captured on the site.
- Built self-serve admin controls: newsletter products, sign-up forms for anywhere on the site, thumbnail settings and test sends.
- Added a live status dashboard showing what went out and to how many people, so day-to-day work needs no developer ticket.
How AI helped: Used an AI script to translate the Salesforce templates into Zeta's different syntax, replacing a slow manual rewrite.
Migrations
WordPress site migrations
Moved several established sites from other platforms to WordPress, with custom themes, Gutenberg blocks, custom plugins and a migration of the old data.
- WordPress
- Gutenberg
- PHP
- Themes
- Plugins
- Migrations
Challenge & my role
Each site ran on another platform with its own content, features and design. It had to move to WordPress without losing its content or the features visitors relied on.
Full-stack WordPress developer
- Managed custom theme and plugin development for each migration.
- Designed the websites and built the custom themes and pages.
- Built a number of custom Gutenberg blocks for the migrated sites.
- Developed custom plugins to bring each old site's features into WordPress, feature by feature.
- Built the migration process that moved the old platform's data into WordPress.
- Treated accessibility and performance as a baseline on every site.
Blocks
Client network website
for a global consulting and technology firm
A network website where clients of a consulting firm see their competitors, what was built for them, and open new leads. Led the delivery end to end; the client gave positive feedback.
- WordPress
- Gutenberg
- REST API
- Advanced Custom Fields
- Multisite
Challenge & my role
Clients of a global consulting firm needed one place to see their competitors, what had been built for them, and to open a new lead. The designs had to become working features, with stakeholders agreeing what to build and what to leave out.
Lead developer
- Led the junior developers and managed the project end to end, from the first design review to the final demonstration.
- Reviewed the designs with the design team, asked what each feature was for and agreed with stakeholders what to build and what to leave out.
- Brainstormed with the junior developers, then completed each feature to the designs.
- Built the features on WordPress with Gutenberg, the REST API, Advanced Custom Fields and a multisite setup.
- Was the point of contact for stakeholders, the business team and the designers, and turned their feedback into work for the team.
- Demonstrated the delivered features to the business team and stakeholders and took their feedback.
Plugins
Paid BuddyPress plugin
A paid, WordPress VIP compatible plugin that adds extra features to BuddyPress. Worked on it end to end: customer tickets, feedback, new features and testing.
- WordPress
- WordPress VIP
- BuddyPress
- PHP
- Plugins
Challenge & my role
Paying customers relied on the plugin for their BuddyPress sites, so tickets needed clear answers and new features had to ship without breaking what already worked.
Senior plugin developer
- Handled customer support tickets from first report to fix, including reproducing the issue and finding the cause.
- Turned customer feedback into new features and built them.
- Tested changes before release, including how they behave with BuddyPress and WordPress updates.
- Owned the plugin day to day: prioritising tickets, features and fixes.
Plugins
Gutenberg newsletter system for a university
for a US university
A WordPress plugin where editors write daily and weekly newsletters in the block editor, with email-safe HTML, a schedule guardrail and sending through Acoustic Campaign.
- WordPress
- Gutenberg
- PHP
- Email
- Acoustic Campaign
- GitHub Actions
- PHPCS
Challenge & my role
Editors needed to build branded daily and weekly newsletters from existing articles and send them on a fixed schedule. The emails also had to render correctly in every email client, Outlook included.
Senior WordPress developer
- Built the newsletter plugin and its custom blocks: header, featured stories, featured events and a dynamic footer.
- Built a post picker that pulls titles, excerpts and images from articles, with per-story crop, ratio and image-position controls.
- Wrote a server-side converter that renders blocks as table-based, Outlook-safe email HTML, validated through Litmus and client UAT.
- Integrated Acoustic Campaign's OAuth and XML APIs: automatic token renewal, template updates, per-type scheduling and click tracking.
- Designed the scheduling guardrail: a settings page sets send days, time and recipient list for each newsletter type.
- Added a publish checklist that blocks publishing outside that schedule, with an administrator-only instant-publish override.
- Added editor tooling: one-click template sync, send status per newsletter, test sends to any address and a public web version of each issue.
- Set up PHPCS checks on pull requests and automated deployment with GitHub Actions.
Themes
E-commerce website with country-specific offers
for a consumer-product brand
Ongoing work on an e-commerce website for a consumer-product brand: custom theme, WooCommerce development and country-specific offers.
- WordPress
- WooCommerce
- PHP
- Themes
- E-commerce
Challenge & my role
The brand sold its product online in different countries. Festival campaigns needed different offers in each country and new page templates, alongside a steady flow of client requests.
Senior WordPress developer
- Worked directly with the client: gathered requirements, reviewed designs and handled their ongoing requests.
- Built the management of different countries and the offers shown in each one.
- Customised WooCommerce and built custom features for the products.
- Designed and built new templates for festival campaigns.