My thoughts on how AI is going to affect WordPress agencies - A short excerpt from an upcoming conversation with @ryanwelcher.com @bph.social and @jonathanbossenger.com
WordPress developer and educator, father to 5 free-range children Writing 👉 briancoords.com Video 👉 youtube.com/@BrianCoords Podcast 👉 webmasters.fm
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My thoughts on how AI is going to affect WordPress agencies - A short excerpt from an upcoming conversation with @ryanwelcher.com @bph.social and @jonathanbossenger.com
Hate to say it but the future of shopping is not “tell an AI agent what you want and it figures out and buys it for you from a shady site that ships the wrong thing” It’s “use a trusted app/site with great customer support that has the largest selection of goods and ships today”
There's also the separate filter for "should_load_remote_block_patterns" that disables the pattern library from dotorg, so I guess there's a few things to consider.
Yeah I was looking and WordPress core uses 'add_theme_support' to declare block patterns. Perhaps we open an issue requesting we add this to the WooCommerce 'theme_support' as a setting: developer.woocommerce.com/docs/theming...
A quick code snippet since someone asked me: How to hide the default WooCommerce block patterns from the pattern inserter. www.briancoords.com/how-to-hide-...
Built in just two weeks with the help of AI, the plugin introduces block-based mobile and dropdown menus, tackling a long-standing gap in WordPress site building.
Wait what?!
Wrote a review of ChatGPT 5 for the company newsletter. aboard.com/desperately-...
Playing with the WordPress Playground CLI and Woo's Smooth Generator to build full Woo demo stores in seconds. (Next step: how can I push this into WordPress Studio for local development 🤔?)
Oh wow thank you!
Yes like google trends but just my name.
Hmmm did I ask for list mode?
I love the "wordpress/create-block" package, but I don't like the name, now that it's being used for many things other than creating blocks. If you agree, please join my discussion on GitHub so we can challenge this terrible injustice. github.com/WordPress/gu...
After a couple weeks of planning and preparing I'm excited to see this announcement. I'm excited to be part of a lineup that includes amazing folks like @jeffpaul.com, @ryanwelcher.com, @briancoords.com, @jonathandesrosiers.com, and many more who I'm looking forward to hearing from, and meeting!
Why I'm a terrible vibe coder, thoughts on the future of AI + WordPress, and my response to another Gutenberg "crisis" article. All that and more in my latest newsletter, sent this morning 📬 www.briancoords.com/newsletter/m...
Back on the pod to talk to @matthewmedeiros.bsky.social about whether WordPress themes are dead, why Claude code burns my money, and when we think AI will be able to make decent UI. webmasters.fm/are-wordpres...
🚀 WooCommerce 10.0 is here! - Major frontend accessibility improvements - Shareable checkout URLs - Coupon enhancements - A better product importer. And over 400 commits from 67 contributors! Get the full breakdown on the Woo Developer Blog 👇 developer.woocommerce.com?p=8768580
Join us for our July live event, focused on the future marketing direction of WooCommerce. developer.woocommerce.com?p=8768617
I added LLMS files to Woo’s dev docs not for AI crawlers but because having super streamlined markdown docs content available in IDEs like Cursor is very helpful. But we could’ve named the file literally anything.
I mentioned the other day that I'm about to launch a #podcasting / #podcast plugin for #WordPress. If you're interested in beta testing that, and finding out more, there's more here: https://www.podcasterplus.com/beta/
This was a major team effort, and I really hope the new Woo dev docs can unlock some more productivity for everyone. Here's an example of how easy it is to put these new docs into Cursor for extremely fast development: www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCrq...
What's been most interesting about watching the new block theme for Woo come together is how much of the work is focused on improving the blocks themselves. As the blocks get more powerful, customizing any block theme (whether this one, TT4, Ollie, etc) gets easier, too.
People outside tech starting to realize how quality software and typing/generating code fast are not correlated
Shoutout to this WordPress plugin from Mark Root-Wiley - it adds a ton of basic 'cleanup' utilities to the block editor to fix common text formatting issues. (I find the one that removes non-breaking spaces super handy) github.com/mrwweb/mrw-p...
Feels like something that honestly core should solve. Those are key parts of a post and should be able to coexist with revisions (and future revisions)
I think the bigger issue is not just building support for all of WooCommerce's custom fields but then confirming support for every extension that builds on top of the Product editor interface and ensuring the experience doesn't feel "broken". WDYT?
That definitely limits the pool of applicants but they'd be lucky to get that job - what a learning experience working on your team!
Yesterday I chatted with @mikemcalister.com about his new free block and theme dev courses on Ollie, how AI is impacting dev education, his experience with Sensei LMS and FSE, and where WordPress should focus next. Catch it in your Podcast app or on YouTube. webmasters.fm/free-wordpre...
My recent feel good jam out artist has been Hiss Golden Messenger. youtu.be/Hrfx6-Im_0U?...
AI is my over-confident junior developer, plus links from around the web in today's newsletter. www.briancoords.com/newsletter/w...
Curious on how to build a WooCommerce AI Bundle Generator with React & AI Services? Of course you are, and @briancoords.com has got your back in this video tutorial www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqV...
They put on a great show!
Big props to @mikemcalister.com for launching this massive free video course about building with full site editing. olliewp.com/theme-academy/
I sat down with @craylor.link to chat about his path to success on YouTube. This conversation is a great mix of learning about the process and about the person. Here's a short clip, but find webmasters.fm in your podcast app for the whole episode.
"But here’s the reality: We are not currently on a trajectory to genius systems." Cal Newport - AI and Work (Some Predictions) calnewport.com/ai-and-work-...
No unfortunately!
If the inner blocks only exist in that one parent block, I do all the JS (and often the css) in one file attached to the parent.
Wrapping up a wonderful week in Lisbon with the Woo Developer Advocacy team, focused mostly on super-powering our developer docs. We have some amazing things coming but if you have any thoughts on what you need from our dev docs, please share.
✉️ My newsletter just hit your inbox. Today I asked the question, is clean code still important? Thoughts about the launch of Figma Sites, the increase in LLM-generated code, and what the true values of web development should be. www.briancoords.com/newsletter/i...
Congrats to the Newspack team. They working to onboard about 40 alt-weeklies after their old CMS platform shut down: newspack.com/joining-with...
As someone who has an extremely dry personality, I totally feel this.
Generative AI and social media tell users what they want to hear, Mike Caulfield writes. That's a problem, but a shift in thinking could fix it.
I pointed it out and it’s my most visible tweet now and I regret it 😂
Can I ask why you went Shopify (over say... WooCommerce)?
This is a great walk through of custom block development - with a WooCommerce focus.
Figma was going to be acquired by Adobe for $20,000,000,000 (that’s twenty billion dollars) and someone in Product at Figma is asking me product development questions for free. This is uncomfy.
Alta Vista was my jam. I think it was the home screen on the computers in my high school library.
I love my job as the guy who adds a fake “keep me signed in” checkbox to every website that does nothing
Considering I’m already paying a monthly fee for Apple One or whatever it’s called, the least they could do is make my HomePods capable of actually playing the song I requested.
I’m generally an Apple fan but they overplayed their hand and I’m grateful to California for handing a win to the open web this week. Most tech lawsuits and regulation attempts aren’t this way.
Buckled down to figure out how to self-host variable fonts the right way resulted in a little how-to article: alwaysopen.design/self-hosting...
Have you looked at Greyd’s multisite tools? They solve a lot of those issues around staging sites. CC @jessicalyschik.com
This is the take I see most often in the techfluencer space. Are there great counterpoints you suggest reading (from the Verge or others)?
Hey friends - if you have experience (positive or negative) building Woo sites with block-based checkout, you're invited to a brief interview to help us improve it (selected applicants will be compensated for their time).
So far yes! I've learned that I don't want any of the fancy features like tasks and dates and stuff - I just needed a really fast and easy place to take notes and draft posts with minimally invasive Markdown formatting, and it is serving that purpose very well.
Keep me updated if you do. I'd love to hear about it as you're going through it.
Our developer docs are the place to start BUT we're investing a lot of time into fixing them up over the coming weeks (including a much better "Getting Started" pathway). developer.woocommerce.com/docs/
WordPress Drama 2025 😂
I was never been able to get Threads into my rotation (same with Instagram or Facebook). Do you use it regularly?
Our developer experience team at Woo is setting up shop on Bluesky. Follow and share if you could 🙏
Yeah and it’s much more aggressive on Bluesky than other networks.
Nice! Would love to see any sites you build with it.
🎙️ Final Session Reveal 🎙️ We’re closing out #PressConf with an on-stage podcast! Join @amberhinds.bsky.social, @briancoords.com, @mjs.bio, & @matthewmedeiros.bsky.social, hosted by Brian Richards, as they riff off the cuff & wrap it all up. 📍 Tempe, AZ | Apr 23–26 🌐 pressconf.events/schedule
Couldn’t get a more click-baity thumbnail?
That thing where you're halfway through reading some research online and suddenly think of @sethrubenstein.info helping to get it online for you. Thanks Seth! www.pewresearch.org/internet/202...
My latest newsletter went out this morning with thoughts about - you guessed - WordPress, AI, and the future of digital content. Plus recent interviews and links from around the web. ✉️ Are websites still important? www.briancoords.com/newsletter/a...
Any tips on activating engagement on your OSS project's GitHub Discussions board?
Nice! I found that we do have an experimental WooCommerce MCP in progress. Pretty neat stuff...
Haha that’s not a bad idea!
I missed this article first but a) it’s excellent and completely accurate in my experience (tho Threads is way worse than Bsky on this front) and b) the comments prove the article is completely accurate. www.wired.com/story/bluesk...
It's the trendy new hotness Kathy modelcontextprotocol.io/introduction
Definitely in consideration. Would an MCP server help you developer stores or extensions with WooCommerce? I'd love to hear more use cases for it.
Do either of you ever feed docs into it as part of the context?
Since Bluesky doesn't have email notifications of replies, tags, etc- how would you keep an eye on an account that doesn't get a huge amount of notifications? I'm thinking some sort of automation that uses the API 🤔
Are you coding with AI (Cursor, Copilot, etc)? If so, do you still read or use documentation?
We did a similar approach with the Create Content Model project- turning parts of a template into separate chunks stored in post meta. Separating design from content. The hardest part was really just the UX and fighting Gutenberg.
Hey Brad! Would you be interested in chatting about this on my podcast? I’ve built a ton of WordPress (and other) sites and we could go over pros/cons, when to use it and when not. Unrelated disclosure I do work at WooCommerce (WP ecomm software).
🎙️ New podcast episode! This week I talk with @katiekeithbarn2.bsky.social all about the WooCommerce community, her experiences with Shopify, and whether WordPress is really built for beginners. webmasters.fm/understandin...
For sure - the cart has inner blocks, but I just meant that there's no query loop of cart items that are designed via blocks (that I'm aware of. Would be cool though!). That's all handled by filters/slots.
I've never noticed this! If you don't have posts you can't see anything in the post template block.. huh. I think the Cart block has it easier because there's no inner blocks to design the layout of each individual cart item, as far as I'm aware.
Ideally, what would a more active Slack look like? Also I hear there's a lot of WP action on Facebook but can't bring myself to log into Facebook.
Do you use version control with WordPress and if so, separate repo for each custom plugin / theme, one repo per site with anything custom in wp-content, some other approach?
You spelled ChatGPT wrong
That m. subdomain 😂
I'm seeing a lot of potential for WordPress Playground Blueprints to launch sites for demos, testing, starter kits, and more. Here's how I used a Cloudflare worker to make easy dynamic Playground Blueprints (and Cursor is great at writing workers). www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAbc...
Should WordPress ship with Sqlite by default, you can replace with MySQL as needed?
All of tech is going through this thing where our passions became profit-driven and our hobbies became hustles. We’re all trying to figure out what really matters in our lives/careers.
Agree. I’d also add the AI effect- the barrier to entry for “building cool things and sharing them” is much lower (and probably becoming over-saturated) and there’s uncertainty about how we’re going to teach new tech these days.
Yeah that’s probably the right answer.
If a developer asked for basic "Getting Started" documentation to try WordPress, where would you send them?
Yeah in hindsight naming your platform after an extinct animal is not a great start.
Let me have my AI calendar schedule something with your AI calendar
Spent two weeks using SimpleNote but the basic editor experience was way too rough. But yeah my plan is to not do anything but write in it for now, and to stay away from “optimizing” it.
Playing with Obsidian as a writing/note-taking app (needed one that can sync without relying on Google or iCloud accounts) and it's pretty cool. Feels like I'm on the verge of falling down an optimization rabbit hole, though.
+1 to an audio feed option!
Haha probably 90 minutes of prep to make it work in a 10 minute demo. Glad the new chats are working out 🙌
If you were watching the instawp webinar, just know that it took about a dozen mistakes before I got to a prompt I could demo. The process wasn’t as clean as it looked in the webinar.
I’d love to build out a WooCommerce community starter pack. Tag anyone you can think of (including yourself) in the replies and share this around if possible. The more reach, the better.
Off the top of my head @kathyisawesome.com and @katiekeithbarn2.bsky.social for sure.
I’d love to build out a WooCommerce community starter pack. Tag anyone you can think of (including yourself) in the replies and share this around if possible. The more reach, the better.