Hello! my name is Dennis i'm a software engenieer with 6 years of experience in the bussines, i had worked with vanilla php, CakePHP, python/Django, SenchaExtjs, AngujarJs, mysql, postgress and indeed elastic search, i did implementations with Django, but i think is no problem to implement it in vanilla php, and making the design of the autocomplete with HTML and css, i always use git for version control and Bitbucket as my main service for private repos.