After a long break, we’re excited to welcome readers back to our WP-Professional of the Month series. We’re thrilled to feature Rodolfo Melogli, a former civil engineer turned WooCommerce expert, and the founder of Business Bloomer, a thriving platform dedicated to helping WooCommerce developers, agencies, and store owners build better online businesses.
Beyond his work with Business Bloomer, Rodolfo is also the solo organizer of Checkout Summit, an upcoming international WooCommerce conference designed to bring developers, founders, and agencies together for focused learning and meaningful connections.
He can be contacted via his website, X, and LinkedIn.
Can you share your journey into the WordPress and WooCommerce ecosystem, including how you first discovered these platforms and what led you to transition from civil engineering to building your career in WooCommerce?
I didn’t start in tech at all. My background is in civil engineering, and for a while, that was my full-time path. Like many engineers, though, I was let go and offered the same job in Australia or Canada, but I rejected. Best decision ever!
During those months, I started building websites for local businesses. One of my first clients wanted an ecommerce website, I picked Woo totally randomly as it seemed like the easiest choice back then (2012)—the rest is history!
I started sharing code snippets and tutorials on my Business Bloomer blog, and turned into an international WooCommerce expert… and all this brought me forward to today, where I’m organizing my own WooCommerce conference and running a private community of WooCommerce developers!
Where are you based? Does your location influence your work?
I’m based in Palermo, Sicily, Italy—but I was born in Rome and lived there until I went to Ireland to work as an engineer. I spent a few years in the Emerald Isle (11 to be precise), in between I lived for 11 months in San Diego, California (because why not!) and traveled through South America for 6 months (with a big suitcase and my laptop), and then… I met my Sicilian wife and I moved to Palermo.
I’ve been working from home since 2011, and this is what I love about my latest job 🙂
What advice would you give to individuals aiming for a career transition, especially those who feel hesitant or afraid to take the first step?
First, being let go is usually a great opportunity. Whenever you’re working 40-60 hours for someone you don’t have the time to stop and think about your future. It’s when bad things happen that the best ideas come out of you.
Second, transitions don’t happen overnight—they can totally happen in parallel. You don’t quit your job on Monday and magically become something else on Tuesday. You start by exploring, learning, and building while you still have a safety net.
What led to the idea of Checkout Summit 2026, and how did the concept take shape?
Checkout Summit grew out of years of observing the WooCommerce community and seeing there wasn’t a dedicated space for developers, agencies, and founders to come together and meet in person.
The goal has always been to create a super-focused event where attendees leave with knowledge they can immediately apply or connections they didn’t have before.
It’s been exciting to see the idea grow from a simple “Sure, I’ll do it!” into a proper international event. Not easy to solo-organize this, but I’m doing my best!
As the sole organizer of Checkout Summit, what has the journey been like so far? How do you manage everything, from coordinating with people and handling logistics like the venue and planning, while staying calm and positive during challenging moments?
Being the only organizer of Checkout Summit has been both exciting and… hard.
On one hand, I have complete control and can shape the event exactly how I envision it. On the other, it means doing EVERYTHING—from coordinating with speakers, sponsors, and attendees, to managing logistics like the venue, catering, and A/V setup.
The key has been breaking everything down into small to-do lists, and I have a board in my office that visually helps me with planning. I rely heavily on checklists and deadlines, but I also leave room for flexibility, because in events, things always come up unexpectedly. In the last few days, for example, I realized I really needed a better audio/video setup for the main conference room, and that came out as… costly. But hopefully it will boost the experience!
Staying calm usually comes from focusing on one task at a time and reminding myself that problems almost always have solutions—I just need to tackle them step by step.
Also, building in public is really helping me (#RoadToCheckoutSummit on Twitter, and less frequently on LinkedIn). People leave comments or send me private messages to keep me sane and support me, which is amazing.
In the end, I am never alone while building this.
Can you tell us a bit about Business Bloomer?
Business Bloomer started as a local web design company. My goal was to build websites so that businesses could “bloom”. Everyone was building websites back then, so I needed to niche down.
After I built a few WooCommerce sites I started posting practical, actionable tips and snippets for WooCommerce users—developers, agencies, and DIY store owners.
Over time, it has grown into a full platform that includes not only blog posts, but also tutorials, mini-plugins, online courses, and a community hub where WooCommerce people can ask questions, share insights, and learn from each other. This is called the “Business Bloomer Club” and members join to learn, get support, help and network.
What’s your perspective on where WooCommerce stands today, and where do you see it heading in the future? / From your experience, what are the key strengths and challenges WooCommerce faces today, and how do you see the platform evolving in the years ahead?
WooCommerce today is stronger than ever in terms of roadmap and direction, because they’re building in public.
Also, its open-source nature allows developers to customize stores in nearly limitless ways, but I think the best thing about it is that, at the end of the day, you own your data and have total freedom.
In the future, I expect (as we can see from their tweets and blog posts), a deep integration with AI, MCP, and new technologies—while also retaining its USP: flexibility and extensibility.
What is your favorite a) Plugin b) Theme c) Hosting and why?
Plugin: honestly, Two Factor Authentication. Not sure why this isn’t in WordPress core. As a website admin, it takes me “longer” to log in, but it’s for the best.
Two Factor Authentication
Theme: after many years on the Storefront theme, I’m currently migrating all my WooCommerce sites to Shoptimizer. I know the product well, the founders even better, and that’s exactly what my WooCommerce websites need: performance, and conversion rate optimization. They have 15 extra modules you can add to your WooCommerce website to boost your sales. A must-have in my opinion.
Hosting: over the years I experimented with various platforms and I switched only if I wasn’t happy with support. I found myself landing on Convesio, which is very much focused on performance, and their 24/7 Slack support is incredibly helpful and fast. The platform also allows my website to handle traffic spikes (for example, during my live classes), and now they’re working on a set of cool AI features that I’m looking forward to testing!
What is Rodolfo like away from WooCommerce? What are your ways of chilling?
I try to keep things simple and active. Sports play a big role in helping me switch off—especially tennis and football. It’s the fastest way for me to clear my head and reset.
I also enjoy spending time with family, usually around good food or at the beach. Travel helps too, even short trips, because I tend to do a lot of laptop-free work while on a plane!
The WP-Content team wishes Rodolfo all the very best in his future endeavors and hopes to see him make more contributions to WordPress and WooCommerce.
Meet our previous WP-Professionals of the Month – Ellen Bauer, Winstina Hughes, Jean-Baptise Audras