Quick intro: I have been writing WordPress since 2009 and shipping products since 2017. For the last 18 months I have been building EasyCommerce, an AI-native ecommerce plugin, as a WooCommerce alternative. It has been stable and in production since 2025, nearly 30 releases in, with real stores running on it.
A few decisions I would defend:
1. Dedicated database tables from day one. Orders, products and customers live in their own wp_ec_* tables instead of wp_posts and wp_postmeta. More on why in a follow-up post, but the short version is that ecommerce query patterns and the post/meta model do not get along at scale.
2. AI as core, not a bolt-on. The headline feature is a shopping agent with 23 tools that can run a full conversation with a customer, search the catalogue, apply a coupon and place an order. It is agentic, not a prompt box.
3. Ship in the open. I will be posting the architecture calls, the things that broke, and the onboarding numbers here.
If you build WordPress or ecommerce products: what is one architecture decision you made early that you would make again?
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