Plusenergie Burgholz
A regional energy project website with live search across every page.
The challenge
Plusenergie Burgholz is a Swiss energy initiative that wants the Burgholz industrial area to produce more renewable energy than it uses. The website has to explain the project to local companies, the municipality and residents, publish news and practical knowledge, and stay easy for the project team to update, all in German and with a lot of content spread across many sections.
My contribution
Designed the site in Figma first, then built it in WordPress on Blocksy with custom PHP templates, where almost all content lives in Advanced Custom Fields so the team edits text, cards, partners and timeline entries without touching the layout. I created custom post types for project news and info boxes, wrote a live search, the news and knowledge filters, the project timeline, the contact and newsletter forms, and set up the domain with DNS and SSL.
How it works
The search is custom. Because most content sits in ACF fields rather than in the normal post body, WordPress search would miss it, so I wrote an AJAX endpoint that searches across the ACF fields of every page. Each result shows the page, the section it was found in and a short excerpt with the term highlighted, and clicking it jumps straight to that section through an anchor. Results appear as you type, from three characters. The news page filters posts by category, the Wissen page groups questions into accordions filtered by audience (companies in the Canton of Bern or in Switzerland), and the project page has a timeline that steps through milestones from the municipal approval to the rollout.
Find the right section, instantly
Enter a search term
Live search starts from three characters.
Search ACF content
A custom WordPress AJAX endpoint searches page fields.
Review matched sections
Results show the page, section and highlighted excerpt.
Jump to the answer
An anchor link opens the matching section.
News categories, audience filters and the milestone timeline offer additional ways to explore.
Forms & content editing
The contact form is a custom PHP form protected with a WordPress nonce, and the newsletter signup in the footer is sent through AJAX, so visitors subscribe without the page reloading. For the team, news and knowledge entries are regular WordPress posts with their own types and categories, and every section of the main pages is an ACF field group with its own labels, which is also what makes the live search possible.
What it covers
- Full website design in Figma, from layout to mobile views
- Custom PHP templates on Blocksy, content managed with ACF
- AJAX live search across ACF fields, with section names, highlighted excerpts and jump links
- Custom post types for project news and info boxes
- News filtered by category, knowledge base filtered by audience
- Accordion FAQ for companies in Bern and across Switzerland
- Interactive project timeline with milestones
- Custom contact form with nonce check and AJAX newsletter signup
- Responsive layout, domain, DNS and SSL setup
Gallery
Outcome
A live, content-rich project website that the team updates on its own, where visitors can find any topic in seconds through the live search, follow the project timeline and read the latest news. The client describes the work as technically strong, with practical solutions for every request.