General Details
Client: Goodnow Farms Chocolate
Project Type: WooCommerce Development & Long-Term Website Support
Scope: WooCommerce customization, feature development, front-end redesign, custom templates, ongoing technical support
Platform: WordPress / WooCommerce (custom theme based on _underscores)
Launch: Ongoing client relationship since 2017
Project Overview
Goodnow Farms Chocolate is a long-running WooCommerce project involving ongoing customization, feature development, and technical support across a highly customized ecommerce website.
Originally inherited from another developer, the site was built on a bespoke WordPress and WooCommerce foundation with extensive custom functionality already in place. Over time, the project evolved into a long-term technical partnership focused on maintaining, extending, and refining the website to support the client’s specific operational and presentation needs.
The front page redesign shown here was part of a broader effort to modernize sections of the site while preserving the flexibility and custom functionality the business relied on.
Project Summary
A significant part of the work on Goodnow Farms involved adapting and extending an existing WooCommerce environment that had been heavily customized prior to my involvement. Because the site relied on custom templates and non-standard WooCommerce implementations, many updates and feature additions required careful troubleshooting and incremental development.
Over the years, development work included WooCommerce template customization, cart and checkout refinements, performance improvements, third-party service troubleshooting, and ongoing adjustments to support evolving business needs.
The 2023 redesign focused primarily on improving the homepage experience while giving the client more flexibility to manage promotional and marketing content internally. To support this, custom front page sections were rebuilt using Advanced Custom Fields, allowing banners, calls-to-action, and featured content areas to be updated without relying on a page builder.
Additional custom systems were also developed throughout the site, including flexible content management for the company’s chocolate awards and custom layouts for educational and process-focused content. Because the site owner is highly involved in managing the website, many implementation decisions prioritized maintainability and ease of ongoing content updates.
The project continues to evolve through ongoing feature additions, refinements, and technical support.
Project Role
As part of Someone Creative’s development team, I became the primary developer responsible for maintaining and extending the website after it was transitioned from a previous developer.
My role included WooCommerce customization, template development, troubleshooting third-party integrations, front-end redesign implementation, and ongoing technical support across the site’s ecommerce functionality.
Much of the work centered around adapting existing systems to support highly specific business requirements while maintaining compatibility with the site’s custom theme architecture and WooCommerce functionality.
Over time, the project became a significant part of my experience working with WordPress and WooCommerce development, particularly in areas involving hooks, template customization, Advanced Custom Fields, and long-term maintenance of a complex ecommerce environment.
