Issue #207 Loop WP

Hi, {{first_name|friend}}. 👋

Welcome to Issue #207 of Loop WP!

Last week was the first week of our new format for the next six weeks or so. We’ve got an expanded “News & Tips” section, as well as a more conversational style on WooCommerce’s radical experiments and more.

This week, we take a look at WooCommerce Bulk Editing, WooCommerce Piñatas, WooCommerce vs Shopify, Plugin Jam, a Security question, and an incredibly fun Wapuu Studio!

Let’s go! 👇

🎉 Tomorrow (Thursday, May 21st, 2026), I’m a guest on Episode 7 of the Do the Woo podcast.

The topic is: Why Most WooCommerce Stores Under-Use Email and What to Fix First.

You can catch the livestream from 9:30am ET / 2:30pm UTC and a replay will be available after.

💡 In last week’s newsletter, I highlighted that Luigi Teschio has been working to improve the product catalogue and management experience, and to scale it, especially for larger stores.

He’s now taken that a step further and started exploring how bulk editing would work with the new experience:

❤️ Automattic has released Wapuu Studio, and it’s so much fun!

I know not everyone is a fan, but you can check out My Gallery, which I imagine will grow very quickly. 🤭

Check out some of my creations to date:

And yes, I am aware Soundwave is a Decepticon, and this is a play on Optimus Prime's catchphrase. 🤭

🪅 The WooCommerce Design Team (yes, they have a new X account, so give it a follow) has announced a little piece of joy coming to WooCommerce stores.

Here are the three piñata characters for each milestone:

🎊 These are giving me some serious Viva Piñata vibes.

😎 Nik McLaughlin has launched a new concept called Plugin Jam, and it looks to be fantastic.

It's basically, as Nik described it, a love letter to the curious, compassionate, creative WordPress community.

It's a really cool place for anyone interested in building with WordPress, and everyone is welcome (even if you are not a coder) to come along and foster creativity and build some stuff together.

🗓️ The first event is coming up on May 22nd (just two days away), and there’s a newsletter to keep updated on future events.

This is a topic we’ve covered before in this newsletter and most recently in Issue 159.

🧠 Katie Keith gave a talk at Checkout Summit, examining some of the myths and the real reasons to choose WooCommerce over Shopify and has now written an accompanying blog post, which is worth a read.

Katie discusses, “5 real reasons to use WooCommerce over Shopify (+ 3 myths we should stop spreading)”. I agree with all her myths, especially about merchants’ attitudes towards principles and ideals.

🚨 And it’s something that Katie and James Kemp have discussed with Beau Lebens on the Do The Woo podcast, whereby Beau reframed the concept to “freedom vs control” (which we looked at in more detail in Issue 193).

I think that, whenever you look at Katie's five points on “why WooCommerce really wins”, the strongest point is “independence from a single vendor”.

🤔 I would also agree that WooCommerce does have more flexibility. However, I'm not entirely sure about the point Katie makes about B2B. Katie knows this area much better than I do, but Shopify has just released native B2B features across the entire platform, with market support.

💡 It's going to be interesting to see how the development is coming in the future.

Katie has written a really solid article, with lots of excellent points. There’s a nice balance at the end of when it’s the right choice for WooCommerce and when Shopify would be better. I would say she summarised those perfectly.

I am not a security expert, but I love this post from Austin. 👇

Security needs to be open, particularly in light of what's happening. Especially with npms and even GitHub’s internal repositories being compromised.

Collectively sharing feedback and identifying issues before WordPress plugins ship seems logical to me. How would it work in reality, I don’t know, but is it worth exploring… yes!

A huge thank you to a couple of incredible sets of people in WordPress this week. I won’t say why, but they know.

All I can say is check them out, give them a follow, and test their products (no affiliate links):

That’s it for this week, {{first_name|friend}}. 👋

This week's excellent and insightful WordPress News & Tips:

If you have a question about this email or WordPress, please reply, and I will respond as soon as possible.

👋 Until next time,