Building Smarter Themes with Timber for WordPress: A Developer’s Guide

If you’ve ever found yourself frustrated by tangled PHP templates, echo statements in loops, and too much logic in your WordPress theme files, you’re not alone.

Enter Timber—a WordPress plugin and library that brings the power of Twig templating to your theme development workflow. It’s clean, fast, and designed to separate logic from presentation. In short: it makes your WordPress theme code more readable and maintainable.

In this post, we’ll cover what Timber is, why it matters, and how to get started.

🪵 What Is Timber?

Timber is an open-source WordPress library that integrates the Twig templating engine (used by Symfony, Drupal, and others) into WordPress themes.

Instead of mixing PHP and HTML in your theme files, Timber lets you:

  • Keep your logic in PHP files (like controllers)
  • Write your HTML using Twig syntax (clean, readable templates)

Think of it like MVC—but tailored for WordPress.

🔍 Why Use Timber?

Here are a few solid reasons developers choose Timber:

✅ Cleaner Code

Twig templates are easier to read than nested PHP.

twigCopyEdit<h1>{{ post.title }}</h1>
<p>{{ post.content }}</p>

Compare that to raw PHP:

phpCopyEdit<h1><?php the_title(); ?></h1>
<p><?php the_content(); ?></p>

Twig is shorter, clearer, and less error-prone.

✅ Separation of Concerns

Timber encourages moving logic (queries, conditionals, ACF fields, etc.) into your PHP files, keeping templates lean and focused on structure and markup.

✅ Reusable Components

With Twig’s include and extends, you can build modular layouts (think headers, footers, partials) that are easier to maintain.

🚀 Getting Started with Timber

1. Install the Timber Plugin

You can install Timber like any other WordPress plugin:

  • Via the WordPress plugin directory
  • Or via Composer: bashCopyEditcomposer require timber/timber

2. Create a Timber-Based Theme

You can either start from scratch or use the official Timber Starter Theme:

bashCopyEditgit clone https://github.com/timber/starter-theme.git wp-content/themes/my-theme

Then activate it in your WordPress admin.

3. Understand the Structure

Timber themes typically have:

  • functions.php: Registers Timber, sets up context, enqueues scripts
  • views/: Where all your Twig templates live
  • templates/: Optional folder for template-routing PHP files
  • single.php, page.php, etc.: These files use Timber to load context and render the right Twig template

4. Basic Example

In single.php:

phpCopyEdit$context = Timber::context();
$context['post'] = Timber::get_post();
Timber::render('single.twig', $context);

In views/single.twig:

twigCopyEdit<article>
  <h1>{{ post.title }}</h1>
  <div>{{ post.content }}</div>
</article>

That’s it—clean separation between logic and markup.

🧰 Advanced Features

  • ACF integration: Easily pull in custom fields.
  • Custom post types & taxonomies: Fully supported.
  • Context manipulation: Add anything to the global or per-template context.
  • Twig Filters: Extend Twig with your own filters or use Timber’s built-in ones.

🧠 Best Practices

  • Use context() to pass only what your templates need
  • Keep heavy logic in PHP, not in your Twig views
  • Break down your templates into components for reusability
  • Don’t overuse global functions inside templates

⚠️ Things to Watch Out For

  • Twig requires a different mindset—some WordPress devs may face a learning curve
  • Timber isn’t officially part of WordPress core—plugin compatibility may need testing
  • Make sure you update Timber regularly to stay secure

🏁 Final Thoughts

Timber is a game-changer for WordPress developers who want to build themes that are modern, clean, and easy to maintain. It’s especially useful for projects with complex layouts, heavy use of custom fields, or collaborative teams.

Once you try Twig + Timber, going back to raw PHP templates will feel like stepping into a time machine.

Need a head start? Download the My Timber Starter Theme, and start experimenting.

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