My special boy: Jax
Jen Pratt: Freelance WordPress Web Designer Springfield Missouri
Available to work remotely on any project
Besides being a freelance WordPress web designer, I’m a wife, artist, and horse lover. My down time is spent riding the trails, gardening, and posting art classes and info for up-and-coming artists. I developed my love of website design early in my art career, back in the early 2000s. I built my own artist website using Adobe GoLive (arguably one of Adobe’s least popular products).
Web design became a passion for me, and I started building and rebuilding my art website, tweaking the design, playing with code to add different functions and accessibility options; basically I started working more with my website than with my artworks!
I quickly outgrew GoLive and it’s bloated code, and began learning to do my own clean HTML code from scratch, eventually learning PHP/MySQL and growing my art website into a full-blown e-commerce site.
In the later 2000s I began doing small website projects for local businesses and community groups, and I grew my knowledge of search engine optimization (SEO) and web design for different types of businesses and organizations.
Unfortunately, I had to step away from professional website design around 2013, when I damaged the tendons in my arms, but I still tinkered with personal website projects. I started working with Content Management Systems (CMS) like Joomla, and eventually found my way to WordPress.
It took over five years to get my tendons in my hands and arms usable again, and a couple more years to get comfortable with computer work. In 2022 I started taking on web design projects again, and finally started my WordPress designer for hire business up in early 2023.
Clay sculpture "Dapple" by Jen Pratt
Interesting Facts About Jen Pratt
My Life Outside of Being a Freelance WordPress Web Designer for Hire
When I’m not working on websites, I typically spend my time working on my farm, in my art studio, or relaxing with family.
For artworks, my medium of choice is clay sculptures, and like websites, I like to build something beautiful out of the mundane; just like dirt, water, and fire can become a spectacular horse sculpture, lines of code can become a user friendly and beautiful web experience.
My studio time is divided between making online classes for other artists and making artworks. Like web design, my art was sidelined for multiple years due to the damage in my tendons, but is slowly becoming part of my life again.