Issue #209 Loop WP

Hi, {{first_name|friend}}. 👋

Welcome to Issue #209 of Loop WP!

Last week, it was about a controversy surrounding the WordPress AI connectors, and we aren’t just talking about API keys.

This week, I share my thoughts about WooCommerce Variation Galleries, which are finally coming to WooCommerce core, and there’s a new Subscriptions player in town.

Let’s go! 👇

🎉 So, this is something I've wanted for a while.

Starting with WooCommerce 10.9, every variation can have its own full gallery of images, not just a single featured image.

When a shopper picks a variation, the gallery swaps to show that variation's full image set.

This is part of the "more in core" initiative, the same one that merged Brands into core back in 9.4. The specific extension being merged is the official Additional Variation Images extension, which has never been free until now.

🤔 That said, will the core implementation be good enough to replace a dedicated plugin for most stores?

The WooCommerce ecosystem has had plugins solving this problem for years, and many of them go well beyond what the core is shipping:

🚨 Core isn't doing any of that… yet.

💡 What it does is clean up the admin experience, which is a genuine improvement.

Each variation's featured image and gallery are now managed in a single ordered list, with the first image automatically set as the primary.

✅ For most smaller stores, I think this will be more than enough. If you've been paying for a plugin purely to give each variation its own set of images, you can probably ditch it when 10.9 lands.

🤔 For anyone running a larger store with more complex media needs, you'll likely still want a dedicated plugin.

It also ties in nicely with the variations editor work James Kemp and Poli Gilad were experimenting with, which we looked at in Issue #206.

🎉 It's starting to feel like WooCommerce is genuinely getting serious about making variable products less of a headache to manage.

I'd love to hear from you, {{first_name|friend}}:

🚀 Rémi Corson has launched Milo, along with a team of experienced developers who have spent over a decade building WooCommerce extensions. Milo exists to make running a subscription store affordable for businesses of any size.

(There are no affiliate links in this section.)

Milo is a subscriptions platform for WooCommerce, rebuilt for modern WordPress.

The free core plugin, Milo Subscriptions, delivers recurring billing, plan switching with proration, free trials, mixed carts, full Blocks checkout support, a nightly Subscription Health Check, and a built-in migrator from WooCommerce Subscriptions.

Milo Payments unifies PayPal, Stripe, Mollie, and Square under one admin.

A $149/year Bundle unlocks every premium add-on, present and future, including Memberships, Gifting, Failed Payment Retry, and Advanced Analytics.

Interested in how this Milo compares to WooCommerce? A possible $508 in savings will intrigue many people.

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,