Brian Coords, developer advocate at WooCommerce, joined Nathan Wrigley on the Jukebox Podcast to discuss WooCommerce’s direction, WordPress’s evolving focus, and how AI and block-based editing are shaping e-commerce.
Background and role
Brian has worked in WordPress for over a decade, including agency work building and managing sites, nonprofit roles, and writing for WP Tavern before joining Automattic. As a developer advocate at WooCommerce he bridges the gap between internal engineers and the wider developer and agency communities—publishing documentation, running office hours, monitoring the repo, and communicating changes like five-week release notes.
Views on WordPress and pace of change
Brian remains optimistic about WordPress. He values its deliberate, foundational approach: WordPress focuses on core building blocks while enabling third-party page builders and plugins to innovate. That slower pace of change can be a strength for the long-term health of a project that powers a substantial portion of the web. He acknowledges AI and broader internet changes are major external pressures but believes WordPress is adapting and narrowing its focus effectively.
Joining Automattic and WooCommerce’s place
Brian joined Automattic recently and gravitated toward developer relations. He hadn’t been a heavy WooCommerce user before joining, but the product’s clarity, recent rebrand, and direction appealed to him. Automattic’s internal realignments over the past year have emphasized centralizing shared efforts—bringing WooCommerce closer to WordPress core teams—allowing collaboration across groups within the company.
Developer relations: scope and approach
WooCommerce’s DevRel team balances technical knowledge with communication skills. DevRel at WooCommerce sits within marketing at Automattic, which provides access to design and marketing resources while maintaining engineering collaboration. The team produces documentation, tutorials, videos, office hours, and community engagement via Slack. Their aim is to ensure developers working on extensions, agencies building stores, and partners like Stripe receive actionable guidance and timely updates.
Global reach, language, and community
WooCommerce is deeply global: stores face unique regional needs like local payment gateways, shipping methods, and tax rules. While the software and many merchant-facing resources are translated, developer-facing content remains predominantly English due to team size. The community Slack (30,000+ members) and active contributors provide frequent feedback and pull requests. Brian notes a large portion of WooCommerce users don’t follow WordPress news closely, so reaching those store owners remains a challenge—Facebook and other platforms likely host many of them.
Rebrand and marketing
WooCommerce’s rebrand aimed to reposition it not merely as a WordPress plugin but as a modern e-commerce solution that can sit alongside SaaS competitors. Automattic has invested heavily in marketing—targeted ads, podcasts, and events—though the budget and scale differ from large SaaS players. Instead of broad consumer visibility like Tube ads, WooCommerce focuses on targeted channels and trade shows relevant to e-commerce professionals and agencies. The marketplace model and free core plugin mean their monetization and marketing strategies differ from SaaS vendors.
Open source trade-offs
Open source brings complexity: WooCommerce supports stores whether or not they pay the company directly, and the ecosystem includes competing plugins and extensions. This openness creates a trade-off: widespread adoption, community contributions, and flexibility vs. the difficulty of centralized support and brand control. Brian sees the benefits as worth it—store owners retain control and can move or customize freely—while Automattic and the community continue to support and evolve the software.
How DevRel engages developers
DevRel uses multiple channels: Slack for quick feedback, office hours, videos and docs, and direct collaborations with agencies through Automattic for Agencies programs. The team often issues calls for testing experimental features and relies on community testing and contributions. They aim to stay present where developers and store builders gather, but acknowledge there’s untapped outreach to the broader set of store owners who aren’t closely following WordPress discussions.
Roadmap and priorities
Two major focuses for WooCommerce are tighter integration with WordPress core (especially block-based editing) and AI-driven features.
– Blocks and Gutenberg: WooCommerce has invested early in block-based store building. The goal is to push improvements up into Gutenberg so store-building blocks, templates, and visual freedom improve for all users. This requires contributing to core and collaborating with the WordPress editor teams.
– AI and store management: AI is a central area of exploration. WooCommerce is experimenting with features that let AI interact with stores—examples include a beta “MCP server” capability enabling AI agents (ChatGPT/Claude-like systems) to log into a store and perform tasks: add products, edit descriptions, adjust pricing, and more. These tools are currently early-stage and often used in demos rather than live stores, with safeguards like permission prompts available.
Brian identifies two AI-driven directions:
1) Backend automation—using AI to manage product catalogs, copies, images, and routine updates to save merchants time.
2) Discovery and shopping—how AI-driven chat interfaces and assistants will surface product recommendations and shopping options. This could change how users discover and purchase products, with implications for ads, product feeds, and how stores present structured data to be discoverable by chat systems and recommendation engines.
Challenges and trust
Brian acknowledges trust and quality concerns: automated ordering and recommendations must avoid mistakes (wrong items, poor fit, returns) and maintain merchant transparency. There’s also a business model shift as search/chat platforms evolve and show products or ads directly in conversational interfaces, creating new distribution channels and competition for merchant visibility.
Automattic and AI
Automattic has public-facing AI tools like an AI site builder on wordpress.com and Telex for building blocks. The company also uses AI internally for support and knowledge work. It’s unclear whether Automattic is training proprietary large models at scale, but they are integrating AI in products and support workflows.
Where to find Brian and resources
Developer resources are at developer.woo.com, which links to docs, community Slack, and newsletters. Brian’s site is briancoords.com and he’s active on Twitter and YouTube.
Summary
WooCommerce is focusing on tighter integration with WordPress core, expanding marketing and brand positioning, and significant AI investments—both to automate store management and to prepare for AI-driven discovery and commerce. The open source nature and global diversity of WooCommerce stores make the ecosystem complex but resilient, with an active community and ongoing DevRel efforts to support developers and merchants.
