WooCommerce Bites Archives - Business Bloomer

Shopify WordPress Plugin vs WooCommerce: Full Demo

In a recent test, I tried the brand-new Shopify WordPress plugin, which many claim could compete with WooCommerce. As someone with over 13 years of WooCommerce experience, I felt both curious and cautious — could Shopify really challenge Woo on its own turf?

To find out, I signed up for Shopify’s trial, installed the plugin on WordPress, went through the setup, and even made a first purchase, so you don’t have to pay for the trial yourself.

This post recaps everything from that video — from installation to my final thoughts — and includes the full embedded demo below, in case you’d rather watch it in action.

WooCommerce Store Credit With Shipping, Taxes & Expiry

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In a recent Business Bloomer Club Slack thread, a member raised a tricky use case involving store credit.

They needed to assign fixed credit amounts (e.g. €1000) to registered customers via the admin panel, ensure it covered both products and shipping, and allow mixed payments (partial credit, partial card). Additionally, the credit had to expire on a specific date and be editable after order creation.

They tested various plugins from the WooCommerce marketplace but ran into common issues: some didn’t deduct shipping from the credit, others failed when taxes were involved, and most were incompatible with existing coupons.

This sparked a deeper conversation about existing solutions, and a plugin developer chimed in with valuable insight: they’re rebuilding the Store Credit experience to address these gaps, and will be rolling it out under the “Account Funds” architecture — which avoids the limitations of coupon-based store credit.

Here’s a summary of the requirements and plugin roadmap.

WooCommerce Admin Order Creation Has Tax Pitfalls

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In a recent Business Bloomer Club Slack thread, a member shared their frustrations with manually creating orders in WooCommerce from the backend — and the surprisingly different behavior compared to placing orders through the frontend checkout.

When an administrator creates an order, the tax calculations behave differently. Specifically, the tax is calculated based on the admin’s country (as defined in their profile or the backend session), rather than the buyer’s billing or shipping address.

In one case, this caused incorrect taxes to be applied and required a workaround to ensure buyer-specific rates were calculated properly.

WooCommerce Server CPU Spikes: WPML, Bots, Or Something Else?

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In a recent Business Bloomer Club Slack thread, a member raised concerns about persistent CPU spikes on a VPS running a WooCommerce site.

Despite solid specs (16 cores, 32GB RAM), aggressive caching (WP Rocket, Redis, Varnish), and Cloudflare firewall rules in place, the site was still experiencing major slowdowns and outages. The suspicion fell on a mix of slow database queries from WPML and ongoing bot attacks.

This sparked a familiar discussion among Club members: how do you actually determine the root cause of performance issues, especially when WooCommerce is paired with heavy plugins like WPML? And more importantly, what’s the right sequence of actions when a production site is under pressure?

WooCommerce Plugin Trademark Violations

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In a recent Business Bloomer Club Slack thread, a concerning situation was shared involving the unexpected and immediate closure of a plugin on the WordPress.org repository due to trademark violations related to WooCommerce.

The author of the affected plugin explained that the plugin was removed without prior warning, a surprising move given that past violations typically resulted in a remediation email with time to address the issue.

This raised questions among community members about consistency in the enforcement of WordPress plugin guidelines and the fairness of immediate takedown actions.

WooCommerce: How Developers Are Actually Using AI

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In a recent Business Bloomer Club Slack thread, members shared their personal experiences with using AI in WooCommerce development.

Despite the increasing number of AI-powered tools, the consensus is that AI is currently most useful for small tasks, quick prototypes, and convenience-based coding assistance, while full-scale development remains firmly in the hands of experienced developers.

This conversation shows a practical, honest view of what’s working — and where AI still falls short — in real-world WooCommerce projects.

WooCommerce: Safely Sync Live Orders And Subs To A Dev Site

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In a recent Business Bloomer Club Slack thread, the discussion focused on a common challenge during WooCommerce rebuilds: how to sync a live store with a development version, especially when it comes to orders, customers, and subscriptions.

There are two main scenarios here. One involves rebuilding a WooCommerce store and needing to migrate recent transactional data (e.g. orders placed after a staging site was cloned). The other is syncing a fresh WooCommerce site with a copy of an existing store — without duplicating live payment authorizations or triggering emails.

This can be tricky and risky. Subscriptions in particular are sensitive, as duplicating them could result in revoked payment tokens or even failed renewals. Fortunately, both tools and real-life experiences were shared in the thread, providing a useful reference for developers quoting similar Woo projects.

WooCommerce: Show Only Color Variations On Archive Pages

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In a recent Business Bloomer Club Slack thread, a WooCommerce store owner shared an issue many apparel sellers will recognize: how can I show each color variation of a variable product as an individual product in the catalog — but not every possible size as well?

The use case makes perfect sense. A store might sell hiking shoes in three colors, and each color might have ten sizes. Showing 30 variations on the archive page would be overwhelming, but showing three (one per color) would be helpful from a user experience standpoint. The goal: display one product per color on the shop and category pages, and let customers choose the size on the single product page.

The store owner tested multiple plugins but ran into the same problem: all attribute variations were shown, not just color. This led to an insightful exchange of suggestions and limitations.

Simplifying WooCommerce UX With a Custom Admin UI

In a recent Business Bloomer Club Slack thread we commented a discussion on X about simplifying the WooCommerce admin — especially for clients and merchants who find the default interface overwhelming.

The conversation started with SimplyWoo, a new plugin by Tia Wood, which strips WooCommerce down to its essentials via a custom admin menu and UI. Rather than overriding WooCommerce, it adds a parallel admin experience that focuses on clarity and ease of use.

Club members drew comparisons to StoreUI, an earlier attempt at rethinking the merchant interface. While both projects follow different architectural approaches, the goal is shared: make WooCommerce more accessible for users who don’t need its full complexity.

WooCommerce Release Videos To Understand What’s New

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In a recent Business Bloomer Club Slack thread, the discussion centered around how WooCommerce communicates its version updates — and how hard it can be to actually understand what changed.

Reading GitHub changelogs, tracking PRs, or scrolling through developer notes is often not enough. Store owners want to know if something affects their sales. Developers want to know if something breaks their custom code.

That’s exactly why a new approach was introduced: short, focused YouTube videos that explain each WooCommerce release. Not just a list of fixes and features, but context, examples, and commentary — aimed at helping the WooCommerce community stay up to date without the friction.

WooCommerce Setup Needs Clarity From the Start

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In a recent Business Bloomer Club Slack thread — this time sparked by an X (formerly Twitter) discussion — the focus was on the very first moments of using WooCommerce.

The original post asked a deceptively simple question: “Imagine you’re new to WooCommerce — never used it before. What do you expect to read, learn, or know in order to install and set it up correctly?”

The responses quickly evolved into a critique of the current onboarding experience, the perception of complexity, and the emotional resistance new users often feel. Developers and store builders alike shared insights, frustrations, and ideas for what could make that first WooCommerce experience go from overwhelming to welcoming.

Here’s what came out of the conversation.

WooCommerce Product Discovery in the Age of AI

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In a recent Business Bloomer Club Slack thread, the topic of AI-driven product discovery came up following a blog post by James Kemp that discussed how AI tools are beginning to influence the way online shoppers find products — and what that means for WooCommerce stores.

The thread quickly shifted to a broader discussion about the impact of tools like ChatGPT, Google’s AI Overviews, and how WooCommerce developers and shop owners can adapt by expanding their presence beyond their own websites.

Several useful resources were shared, and the tone was clear: ecommerce is evolving fast, and being ready for the shift means taking action now.

The discussion brought out a mix of strategic insights and technical recommendations. Below is a summary of the blog post that sparked the conversation, along with thoughts and ideas shared by Club members.

WooCommerce Analytics Options Without Google Analytics

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In a recent Business Bloomer Club Slack thread, a member asked for recommendations on WooCommerce analytics tools that aren’t Google Analytics.

Their client needed something simple, privacy-focused, and ideally not overly complex to implement. This sparked a useful comparison of lightweight analytics options suitable for WooCommerce stores — from simple WordPress plugins to hosted solutions and even self-hosted setups.

Here’s a breakdown of the recommendations that came up — each with its own pros and ideal use cases.

When Ad Blockers Hide WooCommerce Product Images

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In a recent Business Bloomer Club Slack thread, we uncovered a fascinating quirk that could easily go unnoticed for months: product images in WooCommerce can be blocked by ad blockers if their filenames contain certain keywords.

I discovered this when a product image named “banner-ad.png” mysteriously failed to display on the shop page. After checking the browser console, I saw the dreaded net::ERR_BLOCKED_BY_CLIENT—a typical result of an ad blocker doing its job a little too well.

This strange behavior could affect your store’s conversions without you even realizing it. Let’s explore what causes this issue and how to avoid it.

Should WooCommerce Work Without JavaScript?

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In a recent Business Bloomer Club Slack thread, an interesting—and admittedly niche—question came up: what happens to a WooCommerce website if JavaScript is disabled?

While most developers rarely (if ever) test this scenario, it sparked a brief but insightful exchange on how modern WooCommerce stores rely on JavaScript for nearly everything. From dynamic cart updates to checkout validation, many core features break instantly when JavaScript is turned off. But does that even matter?

The question isn’t whether your store should work without JavaScript—it’s whether it needs to. And that brings up accessibility, progressive enhancement, and whether we’re building experiences that completely depend on a scripting language that might fail.

Category: WooCommerce Bites