Patrick Rauland

If you want to learn how to use @Shopify to run an online store I just revamped my course on #LinkedInLearning and it now has 4 hours of video content! 🤯 linkedin.com/learning/shopi…

@jessie_risch It’s only 3 data points. But it’s accelerating in the wrong direction. 😟

#WoosaScoop - €14k MRR That is how much our WooCommerce plugins generate today. 2023: €50k 2024: €35k 2026: €14k Because of this, I decided to do something outrageous. Can you already guess?

@kbjohnson90 @GPrime85 We’ve both agreed kids over spouses. Good to know I guess. :)

@GPrime85 If I didn't save the kids first my wife would murder me 🫠

It’s good to get these questions out of the way on the first date if possible, so you know not to waste time and money on someone who would become an unworthy spouse.

@stuartduff Nice! I cheekily thought the answer was just “Marketing” but it was a whole lot more. Good stuff.

Why Your #WooCommerce Store Is Not Selling stuartduff.com/woocommerce-st…

@jkudish What LLMs are you exploring first? Definitely excited to try local models soon.

Ordered a new M5 Macbook Pro max today. When it eventually arrives (slowest Apple shipping times I've ever seen!), I look forward to playing around with local LLMs. It's time!

In today's episode hosts @KatieKeithBarn2 and @jamesckemp are joined by @checkoutsummit organizer @rmelogli and attendees @BFTrick and @remkusdevries as they share their experiences from this new @WooCommerce focused event. openchannels.fm/building-wooco…

Got to meet some awesome people at #CheckoutSummit

Love this photo from #CheckoutSummit ❤️

@rwkyyy @jkohlbach @WooCommerce @checkoutsummit I wonder if it's more more focused on the Store Owner experience. Ex. Replicating a site from Shopify to WooCommerce and building the custom features they always wanted.

@jkohlbach @BFTrick @WooCommerce @checkoutsummit There are so many starting points, but I would focus on the new buying experience!

@BFTrick says we need a Pepsi challenge for @WooCommerce vs Shopify… great @checkoutsummit talk between the platforms comparing costs, operating, challenges and benefits of both platforms. Really enjoyed it and lots of Woo ecosystem to take away!

WooCommerce isn't trying to be Shopify, and it doesn't need to. In my @checkoutsummit talk next week, I'll talk about the types of sites and business models where WooCommerce is genuinely the better choice.

🚨Breaking: Every AI engineer reading this has written a prompt that starts with "You are an expert..." A new paper just proved that's making your model less accurate. Not slightly less. Measurably, consistently less. Here is what they found. Researchers tested what happens when you give LLMs expert personas "You are a world-class physician," "You are a senior attorney," "You are an expert data scientist" across a broad range of tasks. The alignment scores went up. Users rated the responses higher. The model felt more helpful. The accuracy scores went down. The model became more confident and less correct at the same time. That combination should stop everyone building with these systems. Here is the mechanism, and it is not subtle. When you tell a model it is an expert, it starts performing expertise. It adopts the tone, the vocabulary, the confidence, the authoritative register of someone who knows what they are talking about. But performance and knowledge are not the same thing. The model does not have more information because you told it to act like a cardiologist. It has the same information. What changes is how willing it is to express uncertainty, push back, say "I don't know," or hedge. Experts don't hedge. So the model stops hedging. Hedges are often where accuracy lives. The paper introduces PRISM: a system that routes queries to the right persona based on the actual intent of the question, rather than having the user assign a persona upfront or using a blanket expert framing for every interaction. The results show this routing approach recovers much of the alignment benefit without the accuracy penalty. But the fix is not the point. The point is that every product, every agent pipeline, every system prompt in the industry that opens with "You are an expert in X" has been making this exact trade without knowing it. Alignment went up. Stars went up. Thumbs up went up. Accuracy went down. Quietly. Unmeasured. And the users rating those interactions higher were the ones receiving more confidently wrong answers. The AI that sounds like an expert gets rewarded. The AI that reasons like one does not.

In WordPress, you can go from valued community member to persona non grata overnight. Not for sabotage. For suggesting the project should be led differently. I wrote about what that does to an ecosystem: coenjacobs.com/blog/fear-voic…

A discounted Checkout Summit ticket just became available! It's ready for transfer—DM me if you want it 🙂

@giodc @rmelogli @jamesckemp @briancoords @KatieKeithBarn2 @ianmisner @pmgarman @MarcoAlmeidaPT With just Translate and Adapt? Or do you add anything else to it?

@rmelogli @jamesckemp @briancoords @KatieKeithBarn2 @ianmisner @pmgarman @BFTrick @MarcoAlmeidaPT I ll add multilanguage support, Shopify do it very well

Happy Friday! Here’s this week’s #WooQuestionFriday for all the WooCommerce fans & makers out there 💜 💬What’s one Shopify feature or function you secretly admire—and wish WooCommerce had? @jamesckemp @briancoords @KatieKeithBarn2 @ianmisner @pmgarman @BFTrick @MarcoAlmeidaPT @remkusdevries @daveloodts @BobWP @bryceadams @MrBrianHaas @tommy_ecom @BrianHenryIE @SRHDesign @brentmackinnon @cipriangb @remicorson @kish2011_ @robinpietersen @devinsays @se_nadir @marinusklasen @wordpressjoe @codeagencybe @vyskoczilova @tnash @DaymoBrew @brettstone_ @PoeHaH @businessdad @colmtroy @simontomkins @neke989 @mark_jansen @toniievych @jonathan_dejong @chrisfromthelc @sinanisler @WPBundleHQ @toniievych @SternaleZA

@rmelogli Interesting idea. I don’t think you’d get many speakers though.

#RoadToCheckoutSummit −42⏳ On my way back to Palermo via Bratislava, after a nice break in Austria. I realized there are only 42 days left and I've got still lots to do, despite I've been working on this for over 9 months. The last idea I came up with is that I will open up some additional speaking slots. Everyone will have the chance to share something cool about their business in 10 minutes or so. Like a lightning talk, and 100% promotional, if it needs to be. Do you think this is a good idea?

Classic

Starting my LOTR marathon

I'm going live in exactly 31 hours (3 March at 4PM Germany time) with @DotheWoo @jamesckemp @KatieKeithBarn2 for an amazing videochat about "WooCommerce Events are Growing. What Value Can You Get From Attending?" See you there: youtube.com/live/pEWPtorC1…

Great breakdown! I love how detailed the post is, including task lengths and monthly savings. This guy went the other direction: x.com/rmelogli/statu… and trust me, what they found during and after the migraiton says a lot about Shopify and WooCommerce :) You should join us in Palermo!

#RoadToCheckoutSummit −87⏳ Excited to share the first Checkout Summit 2026 speaker announcement today: Patrick Rauland @BFTrick was someone I followed back in the Woo days—I really admired his blog posts and content. Fast forward, and now he’s joining us at Checkout Summit! Patrick is the Sr. Ecommerce Engineer at Xero Shoes, helping grow their online presence and sales. He’s led three major WooCommerce releases, co-founded WooSesh, launched products on Kickstarter, and shares his knowledge via LinkedIn Learning and Packt. His talk: “An Apples-to-Apples Look at WooCommerce vs. Shopify After a Large-Scale Migration”, is going to be amazing. We’re talking millions of orders, customers, custom products, and bespoke flows—the kind of stuff that only comes from real, large-scale experience. Check out Patrick’s profile (and the other speakers) here: checkoutsummit.com/speakers/ I can’t wait to share the rest of the presentations over the coming weeks!

@tomwillmot @WordPress It’s childish. 👎

It’s dispiriting to see @WordPress putting out this kind of energy.