Wheelhouse Web Development was founded by Jennifer Gardiner. Jennifer has been a web developer since 1999, always keeping up with the latest and greatest trends in Web Development. Her personal online portfolio can be found here.
Jennifer started out as an HTML and CSS developer making websites that in today’s world would make your heart stop with all the animated gifs that were popping around the screen. These sites were what kept the 90’s entertaining, to say the least.
She moved past those days and moved into a modern CMS environment. She started out coding custom themes for Dot Net Nuke CMS. She created a lot of these in the early 2000s using their module-based themes.
She was introduced to WordPress in 2006. When she first looked at WordPress she was confused and didn’t want anything to do with it. She was used to coding everything in ASP and .Net and PHP confused her. Once PHP clicked in her head there was no going back. She didn’t want anything to do with the .Net and ASP coding anymore. WordPress was her future.
When she first started coding themes in WordPress she was basically taking a default theme and customizing it to what she needed/wanted it to be, using custom CSS and HTML. Then she was introduced to ThemeForest. she couldn’t help but try and customize themes to what she needed them to be. She wasn’t happy with the box solutions. The builders drove her nuts, but she used them when she needed to.
She was then introduced to Genesis. This was fantastic! She was able to create the child theme and build off of the boxed framework and come up with amazing websites that were needed for each client without the heaviness of the ThemeForest themes.
In 2015 she was introduced to Advanced Custom Fields on a project that she was asked to edit. The site was built completely custom using ACF, Bootstrap, and Javascript. She dissected the code and figured out what was going on in there and how everything was connecting and being used. She LOVED it!!!! After working on this project she was on a mission to learn more. She took a class at Udemy and decided she would never use a boxed theme again unless a client specifically requested it. ACF has become her go-to for every site she develops. She’s used it in many different ways including but not limited to, custom CMS backend, custom frontend forms to create a post in a CPT, Gutenberg Block coding, WooCommerce Customizations, Learn Press / Dash Customizations, and Flexible Landing pages.
In 2020 once Covid 19 hit, she decided it was time to start an LLC and go full time on her own with an agency to help better the lives of business owners and aid them on this more enhanced online journey.