Do you plan to set up a WordPress-based e-commerce site, or sell goods internationally? If so, then you should probably think about providing users with the convenience of currency conversion on your website.
Currency conversion allows your visitors to have the price of an international currency amount converted into their home currency at the point of sale. It also allows visitors and customers to see the exact amount their credit card or PayPal account will be charged, expressed in their local currency.
One great benefit of adding currency conversion is that it allows customers to view and understand prices in foreign countries in their own local currency, and makes it easier for customers to calculate their costs and expenses.
If your site is powered by WordPress, you can add currency conversion using a plugin to your website or blog, allowing your prospective customers to quickly understand the cost of your goods.
Currencyr – Free Currency Converting Tool For WP Websites & Blogs
Currencyr is a simple yet advanced, intuitive, easy-to-use and complete currency converter plugin with a unique and attractive converter tooltip. It’s also free!
Useful plugin features include the following:
- In-line converter
- Supports several exchange rates providers, such as Yahoo! and Open Exchange Rates
- WP-Cron task scheduler enabled
- Currency table and converter widget
- Supports integration with a number of e-store plugins such as WP-eCommerce and Shopp.
- Automatically determines local currency
- Full support for language translations
Important: The Currencyr plugin needs PHP 5.3.0 or later. Do not use this plugin if you currently have an older version of PHP installed. Alternatively, ask your web hosting company to update your PHP.
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You can install the currency conversion plugin from your WP dashboard by searching for “currencyr” in the Plugins area and clicking “Install Now” …
After you have installed and activated the plugin, you can get to the plugin’s settings area by selecting Currencyr from your WP admin menu …
This takes you to the plugin settings area …
For example, you can select a base currency from the Base Currency drop-down menu if you want a different currency than the default option ‘United States Dollar – (USD)’ …
Similarly, you can select a data provider from the drop-down menu in the ‘Provider’ section. The default selection is ‘Yahoo! Finance’, but you can select one of the other options, like European Central Bank, FoxRate, Google Finance or Open Exchange Rates …
Note: If you choose Open Exchange Rates as your provider, you will need an API (Application Programming Interface) ID …
You can specify how frequently you would like to update the currency exchange rates by choosing an option from the Update Rates drop-down menu …
The Currencyr plugin uses jQuery, which allows web developers to add things like animation effects to web applications (like WP plugins).
If you have no reason to edit the jQuery settings, simply ignore this section …
Configure the remainder of the settings to suit your own preferences and don’t forget to click Save Changes when finished …
Once your plugin settings have been configured, you can easily start adding currency conversion to any WordPress page or post using shortcodes and widgets.
See the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section at the bottom of this tutorial to learn more about using currency codes (e.g. USD, AUD, CAD, etc …) with this plugin.
Using Shortcodes
You can insert currency conversion into posts, pages and widgets without editing your web templates using shortcodes.
Let’s take a look at some examples of currency shortcodes that you can add to WordPress posts and pages:
Let’s say that you are selling goods online for a fixed price (e.g. $175) in US Dollars (USD), and you would like to display your price converted into British pounds (GBP) on your sales page.
All you need to do is insert the following shortcode to your page content …
Note: You can also insert prices in dollars and cents (e.g. 16.95, 22.00, 399.99, etc …)
The example below shows how your shortcode will look after being inserted into a page or post …
After publishing your content, your converted currency will display like this …
Using this example, let’s also convert the same price into different currencies.
To do this, use following shortcode (add as many currency symbols as you want separated by vertical pipes) …
You can see how the shortcode appears when you add it to a page …
After publishing the page or post, your converted currency amounts will then appear as you can see below …
See the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section at the end of this tutorial to learn more about changing the currency separator symbol with this plugin.
Now, suppose you would like to select a different base currency than the one you have selected as your default.
For example, say you have specified your default base currency as EUR and you have a section on your e-commerce pages targeted to non-European customers (for example, Australia or Canada), you can change the base currency using the following shortcode …
You can see how the shortcode appears when added to a page …
After publishing the page, the converted currency will then appear like this …
Plugin Widget
You can also add a currency converter to your site’s sidebar menu using the Currencyr widget.
To add currency conversion to your sidebar, select Appearance > Widgets in your WordPress user admin menu …
In the Widgets > Available Widgets section find the ‘Currencyr’ widget and drag it to an Active Widgets area …
Configure the widget options as shown below (add currency codes separated by commas), and click Save to update your settings …
Your currency converter tool will now appear on your site’s sidebar menu with the settings you have specified …
Additional Plugin Notes
This section contains additional information about using the Currencyr plugin.
Currency Separator
The Currencyr plugin lets you specify a symbol of your choice to display as the currency separator when using several currencies.
You can select a different symbol in the Multiple Separator settings section.
So, for example, entering the default symbol “/” (forward slash) …
Displays your currency values separated by the forward slash as you can see in the screenshot below …
If you change the symbol and update your settings …
Your web visitors will see the new symbol used as the currency separator …
Using The Plugin With WordPress-Compatible e-Commerce Software
As described earlier, the plugin can be integrated with various WP-compatible e-commerce plugins such as WooCommerce, WP-eCommerce and Shopp …
(image sourced from plugin site)
Congratulations! Now you can go and easily add currency conversion to your WordPress website.
To learn more about WordPress e-commerce plugins, see the tutorial below:
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"Wow! I never knew there's so much to learn about WordPress! I bought one of the WordPress for Dummies three years ago, such authors need to be on this course!" - Rich Law, Create A Blog Now