James Kemp

First up are variation image galleries. This one’s close to home – the very first plugin I made for Iconic was “Multiple Images per Variation” back in 2011 (15 years). It’s been needed as a core feature for a long time, and it’s now on for every store. If you were using the Marketplace Additional Variation Images extension, that migrates across and auto-deactivates.

Next, with much assistance from Simon Harper and Brian Haas, we have a built-in EU order withdrawal flow. When enabled (Advanced > Feature), shoppers can go to /my-account/withdraw-order/, send a request, and you (the merchant) get an email plus an inbox notification. A lot of EU stores have been figuring this out on their own, so I’m excited for it to be a core feature!

Keep reading

I’ve been using Grok Bot a lot recently, but I’m really struggling to get on board with it. The part I find the hardest is mostly in how it replies to me – I find it’s trying to reply concisely, but it strips so much out of its reply that it just becomes abrupt, but still uses way too many words.

Keep reading

Every few weeks, a new AI tool launches.

Every few days, someone posts about their AI-powered workflow on X or LinkedIn.

And if you’re anything like me, there’s this nagging feeling that you should be doing more. Using these tools better. Learning faster.

I use Claude Desktop with AutoMem for the majority of my work as a Product Manager at WooCommerce now. I’ve got integrations with Linear for issue management, GitHub for triage context, Enterpret’s Wisdom for user feedback synthesis. I can execute faster and more effectively than I could previously, when I was manually opening dozens of browser tabs to analyse feedback patterns.

And I still feel like there’s more I could be doing.

If that resonates with you, good. That means you’re paying attention.

But here’s what I want you to understand: that feeling shows you’re aware, not behind. Awareness is the first step to actually using these tools in a way that transforms how you work.

Keep reading

If you’ve ever triaged bugs, you know the drill. Someone reports an issue, and your first question is: can I reproduce this on a clean install?

For WordPress, that used to mean spinning up a site in LocalWP or WordPress Studio. Enter a title, choose your settings, wait for it to provision, then manually install WooCommerce, then install Query Monitor, then maybe a few other plugins. LocalWP has blueprints, but they’re snapshots of existing sites, so they go stale as soon as plugins release updates. And you end up with dozens of unused local installs cluttering your machine.

Those tools are great for persistent testing sites or local development. But for quick, throwaway bug reproduction, they’re overkill.

WordPress Playground changed this. Sites are ephemeral (not persistent, just temporary). Use it once and close the tab. No cleanup, no clutter. But the blueprint URLs are long and the JSON syntax is hard to remember.

So I made a Raycast script that launches a fully configured WooCommerce Playground site in about two seconds. Type “Woo”, hit enter, and you’re in.

Keep reading