Brian Coords
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briancoords.com
Brian Coords
@briancoords.com
1.3K followers 220 following 760 posts
WordPress developer and educator, father to 5 free-range children
Writing 👉 briancoords.com
Video 👉 youtube.com/@BrianCoords
Podcast 👉 webmasters.fm
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briancoords.com
Yesterday I chatted with @ianmisner.com about what makes a checkout page convert and what to think about ahead of Black Friday.

He gave a lot of good advice, including this one about maximizing those new customer relationships:
October 31, 2025 at 2:15 PM
briancoords.com
Took some prompt engineering but Telex was able to make me an animated bouncing-DVD screensaver WordPress block. For.. you know.. reasons.
September 22, 2025 at 5:07 PM
briancoords.com
My thoughts on how AI is going to affect WordPress agencies -

A short excerpt from an upcoming conversation with @ryanwelcher.com @bph.social and @jonathanbossenger.com
September 4, 2025 at 2:12 PM
briancoords.com
Playing with the WordPress Playground CLI and Woo's Smooth Generator to build full Woo demo stores in seconds.

(Next step: how can I push this into WordPress Studio for local development 🤔?)
August 6, 2025 at 10:06 PM
briancoords.com
I sat down with @craylor.link to chat about his path to success on YouTube.

This conversation is a great mix of learning about the process and about the person. Here's a short clip, but find webmasters.fm in your podcast app for the whole episode.
June 2, 2025 at 1:41 PM
briancoords.com
Wrapping up a wonderful week in Lisbon with the Woo Developer Advocacy team, focused mostly on super-powering our developer docs. We have some amazing things coming but if you have any thoughts on what you need from our dev docs, please share.
May 23, 2025 at 11:55 AM
briancoords.com
Nice! I found that we do have an experimental WooCommerce MCP in progress. Pretty neat stuff...
Can you list the top five products in my store by price? I'll help you list the products and sort them by price. Based on the product list, here are the top five products sorted by price (from highest to lowest): Hoodie with Logo - $45.00 Hoodie - $42.00-$45.00 (variable pricing) V-Neck T-Shirt - $15.00-$20.00 (variable pricing) T-Shirt with Logo - $18.00 Beanie with Logo - $18.00 (on sale from $20.00) The prices are in USD and some products have variable pricing depending on their options/variations. Would you like more details about any of these products or would you like to see their specific variations? What are the three biggest orders in my store? I'll help you check the orders in your store, sorted by total amount. Here are the three biggest orders in your store by total amount: Order #121 - $1,327.60 Customer: Janie Bashirian Status: Processing Notable items: 5 Sunglasses ($450), 6 Hoodies with Pocket ($210), 8 T-Shirts ($144) Order #124 - $978.00 Customer: Ayoub Bertrand Status: Processing Notable items: 9 Belts ($495), 9 Long Sleeve Tees ($225), 9 Beanies with Logo ($162) Order #127 - $906.00 Customer: Yayasan Agustina Tbk (Company) Status: Completed Notable items: 8 Hoodies - Blue with Logo ($360), 9 Caps ($144), 2 Belts ($110) Would you like more details about any of these orders or would you like to see other order information?
April 9, 2025 at 10:19 PM
briancoords.com
Looking forward to talking all about WordPress & AI with my pal @nickdiego.com and @vikasprogrammer.bsky.social tomorrow.

Register here: streamyard.com/watch/xU5BV7...
Building WordPress Plugins with Al with Nick and Brian! 12th Mar Wednesday 9 PM IST / 3:30 PM UTC
March 11, 2025 at 3:35 PM
briancoords.com
Love seeing this WordPress plugin which is nothing but a shortcode and custom block but feels like it needs a top-level admin menu item to show a very basic instructions page and sub-items full of CTAs to other products/services.
The image displays a dark-themed dropdown menu with a blue-highlighted “Countdown” tab at the top, featuring a clock icon. The menu options listed include “Countdown” in bold, followed by “Featured Plugins,” “Featured Themes,” “Hire an Expert” in green text, and “Support or Any Ideas?” also in green.
January 29, 2025 at 10:15 PM
briancoords.com
If you're interested in hearing how the GenerateBlocks team is building tools that make developers love Gutenberg, here's a great example of @iansvoboda.com talking about how they added ACF support in query loops.
January 22, 2025 at 3:15 PM
briancoords.com
Seeing people post negative temperatures wondering how you survive. Meanwhile it’s a warm sunbathing and weed-pulling day with this little guy.
A dog laying in some weeds
January 20, 2025 at 7:24 PM
briancoords.com
And another one - a quick block style to force the new Grid group block to stack on mobile. Not perfect but solves like 90% of the ways I want to use the grid block.
register_block_style( 'core/group', array( 'label' => 'Stack Grid on Mobile', 'name' => 'stack-grid-on-mobile', 'inline_style' => ' @media (max-width: 768px){ .is-style-stack-grid-on-mobile{ grid-template-columns: 1fr !important; } .is-style-stack-grid-on-mobile > * { grid-column: 1 / -1 !important; } } ', ) );
January 17, 2025 at 8:04 PM
briancoords.com
It's not fancy or glamorous but this code snippet solves a huge pain point for me in Gutenberg. Reverse the column flow on desktop, let it stack correctly on mobile. Super handy for repeatable image/text combos where you want to alternate the visual order on desktop.
register_block_style( 'core/columns', array( 'label' => 'Reverse on Desktop', 'name' => 'reverse-on-desktop', 'inline_style' => ' @media (min-width: 768px){ .is-style-reverse-on-desktop{ flex-direction: row-reverse; } } ', ) );
January 17, 2025 at 8:03 PM
briancoords.com
Elementor adding an accessibility overlay widget ahead of the new EU regulations hitting this year? 🤔
A man in a dark shirt and white undershirt is presenting a new “Accessibility Widget” during the Elementor web.fwrd 2025 online event. On the right side of the screen, a widget interface is displayed, showcasing various accessibility options such as text resizing, grayscale, contrast, sitemap, and color adjustments.
January 17, 2025 at 2:52 PM
briancoords.com
Pointed Raycast at a folder with some simple bash scripts in it. They become commands you can run with Raycast (using comments in the header for the name, etc.).

So handy, even simple things like "Open this exact file with this app" can become a command.
A bash script to quickly open my ssh config file in VS Code.
January 15, 2025 at 3:38 PM
briancoords.com
Looks like - utf8mb4
January 14, 2025 at 3:36 PM
briancoords.com
For some reason I can't save posts with emojis unless I enable this chunk of code on my site (filtering the post content to run through wp_encode_emoji). Wondering if anyone knows why this might be 🤔

(this is one of like three recent bugs on my site that have been stumping me)
Screenshot of a filter where I run wp_encode_emoji on the wp_insert_post_data filter.
January 14, 2025 at 3:08 PM
briancoords.com
Example - a very simple agent via N8n who can answer questions about my past blog posts and fetch relevant text (all using the WP Rest API).

This is infinitely harder when your content is inside a black box.
Screenshot of an n8n workflow interface showing a “Test WP Search” automation process. The workflow diagram connects nodes including “When chat message received,” “AI Agent,” “OpenAI Chat Model,” “Window Buffer Memory,” and “HTTP Request.” The right panel displays logs and input data, while the left sidebar lists admin options like templates and variables.
January 13, 2025 at 8:37 PM
briancoords.com
Automate the application password and username process! You can ask for their WordPress URL and then send them to an screen that lets them authorize you (send you back the credentials via the URL)
January 10, 2025 at 6:59 PM
briancoords.com
Another cool Python/Streamlit thing - creating your own custom dashboards to view data.

I've been wanting a central place to check pod/video/newsletter stats. With a few lines of code I can grab data from the WP REST API. Here's a few iterations playing with its ability to generate tables/charts:
January 9, 2025 at 5:32 PM
briancoords.com
Wow. Good thing I don't turn 40 until 2026.
YouTube thumbnail that says "Over 40? Don't Do It" The title of the video is "Don't be a YouTuber over 40 in 2025, Do this instead"
January 9, 2025 at 3:15 PM
briancoords.com
I recently wrote a python script to help me aggregate any links I shared in Bluesky.

I just added Streamlit and with about 5 lines of code I have a little app/UI for my script that I can run (instead of just running in the terminal). Neat!
A screenshot of a web app titled “Brian’s Bluesky Links,” displaying a tool that fetches recent Bluesky posts with URLs. The interface includes a field to specify the maximum number of posts to fetch, a button labeled “Fetch recent posts with URLs,” and a section titled “Posts with URLs…” showing fetched posts with hyperlinks. The app has a clean layout with a success message at the bottom saying, “Posts with URLs fetched successfully!”
January 8, 2025 at 11:13 PM
briancoords.com
I built an app on Retool that lets me read/write blog posts via the the WP Rest API. I’m not actually sure why I’d want that, but it was a fun learning experience!
Screenshot of the retool interface with a table on the left showing my 10 most recent posts and a form on the right to add a new post.
January 6, 2025 at 10:21 PM
briancoords.com
This puppy (upper right) is joining my family this week. We haven’t had a puppy in like a decade. If you’re a puppy expert, please send me your best resources because I’ve only had human infants the last ten years.
January 4, 2025 at 2:01 AM
briancoords.com
Working on a prototype over the holidays and fighting the block editor (and interactivity API, which I may just ditch) every step of the way.
Screenshot of a Git commit history showing multiple commits by a user named “bacoords” with messages summarizing changes, such as “stashing some bad code,” “enables flex controls,” and “adds basic nav block.” Each commit includes a timestamp and a unique commit hash for reference, organized by date. The interface is displayed on a dark background.
December 27, 2024 at 6:32 PM