Overview
Artnet News is one of the world’s largest online platforms for art market news, criticism, and culture. The site attracts millions of monthly visitors and serves a global audience of collectors, galleries, artists, and art professionals.
My role
Ongoing freelance engineering over 5+ years. I work directly with the Artnet team on WordPress core development, performance optimization, ad infrastructure, plugin development, and production stability for a high-traffic publishing platform.
Challenge
A media platform at this scale faces constant pressure: millions of page views, complex ad monetization, AMP compliance, metered paywall logic, database performance under heavy editorial load, and the need to ship features without breaking a live site that can’t afford downtime.
What I built and improved
- 11 custom artnet-* WordPress plugins — including artnet-ads (ad placement and rotation engine), artnet-api (REST endpoints for content distribution), artnet-trending (trending stories algorithm), artnet-statistics (traffic analytics), artnet-cache-control (cache invalidation logic), and editorial workflow tools
- AMP implementation across 45+ template files — custom AMP-compatible templates for articles, galleries, social sharing, and related content
- Timber/Twig-based templating architecture — structured content rendering with reusable components
- Custom post types for editorial workflows — in-brief news, partner content, quotes, and FAQ content types
- Database optimization with Redis caching — query tuning, indexing, and Redis-backed object cache
- Content distribution integrations — Facebook Instant Articles, Apple News, Sailthru email marketing, and Swiftype search
- Metered paywall with Leaky Paywall — subscription and access control for premium content
- Google Ads integration — custom plugin for ad placement and revenue optimization
- Infrastructure work with Docker, Google Cloud, and Kubernetes
- Media pipeline with Cloudinary and AWS S3
Stack
WordPress, PHP, MySQL, Timber/Twig, JavaScript, jQuery, Sass, Grunt, Redis, Docker, Kubernetes, Google Cloud, Cloudflare, AWS S3, Cloudinary, Google Ads, AMP, REST API, Yoast SEO, Co-Authors Plus
Impact
- 5+ years of continuous freelance collaboration on a platform serving millions of monthly readers worldwide
- 11 production plugins powering ad revenue, content distribution, trending algorithms, and editorial workflows
- Measurable improvements in page load performance through Redis caching and database optimization
- Multi-channel content delivery — AMP, Facebook Instant Articles, Apple News, and email via Sailthru
- Stable ad revenue infrastructure supporting complex rotation and targeting requirements
- Reliable production environment across Docker and Google Cloud/Kubernetes with Cloudflare CDN
