Do you plan to set up an e-commerce site with WordPress, or sell products to a global customer base? If so, then you may want to consider providing users with a currency conversion feature.
Currency conversion tools let your visitors translate foreign currency amounts to their home currency at the point of sale. It also allows your visitors to see the exact amount their card or PayPal account will be charged, displayed in their home currency.
One great advantage of adding currency conversion to your site is that it lets customers see and understand prices in foreign countries in their own local currency, making it it easier for purchasers to calculate their costs and expenses.
If your site is powered by WordPress, it’s easy to add currency conversion via a plugin to WordPress, allowing your site visitors to quickly perform currency conversions to determine the cost of your goods.
Currencyr – WP Free Currency Converting Plugin
Currencyr is a simple, easy-to-use and complete currency converter WP plugin with a unique and attractive converter tooltip. It’s also free!
Plugin features include:
- In-line conversion tool
- Supports a number of exchange rates providers, such as Google and FoxRates
- WP-Cron task scheduler enabled
- Currency table and converter widget
- Can be integrated with a number of e-store plugins like WooCommerce, WP-eCommerce, Shopp, and Easy Digital Downloads.
- Automatically detects local currency
- Full support for language translations
Note: The Currencyr plugin needs your server to be running PHP 5.3.0 or later. Do not use this plugin if you currently have an older version of PHP installed on your server. Ask your web hosting support team to check and upgrade your PHP server installation.
***
You can install the plugin from your WP admin area by searching for “currencyr” in the Plugins section and clicking “Install Now” …
When you have installed and activated the plugin, you can get to the plugin’s settings screen by choosing Currencyr from your admin area …
This takes you to the plugin settings page …
For example, you can select a base currency from the ‘Base Currency’ dropdown menu. The default base currency is ’USD’ …
You can choose which data provider you want to use from the dropdown menu in the ‘Provider’ section. The default option is Yahoo Finance, but you can also select one of the other options, like FoxRate 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 select how often you would like to update the 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 (e.g. WP plugins).
If you have no reason to modify the jQuery settings, you can just ignore this section …
Edit the remainder of the plugin settings and don’t forget to click ‘Save Changes’ when done …
After you have finished configuring your plugin settings, you can easily start adding currency conversion to any WordPress post or page using shortcodes and widgets.
See the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section further below to learn how to use currency codes (e.g. USD, NZD, CAD, etc …) with the Currencyr plugin.
Using Shortcodes
You can insert currency conversion into pages, posts and widgets without touching your web templates using shortcodes.
Let’s take a look at some examples of currency shortcodes that you can add to pages and posts:
Let’s say that you sell an item for a set price (e.g. $175) in US Dollars (USD), and you want to display this price converted into British pounds (GBP) on your product information page.
To do this, just add the following shortcode into your post or page …
Note: You can also insert pricing in dollars and cents (for example, 155.25, 29.95, 295.75, etc …)
The example below shows how the shortcode should look after being added to a page or post …
When your page or post has been published, your currency conversion will then appear as you can see below …
Using this example, let’s now display the same price into different currencies.
To do this, use following shortcode (you can add as many currency symbols as you like by using vertical pipes) …
You can see how the shortcode looks when inserted into your content …
Once the page or post has been published, the currency conversion will then appear as shown below …
refer to the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section below to learn more about changing the currency separator symbol in the Currencyr plugin.
Now, let’s suppose that you would like to select a different base currency than the one set as your default.
For example, if you have specified your default base currency as EUR and you have a section on your site targeted to customers from countries like Australia or Canada, you can change the base currency using the following shortcode …
Here’s how the above shortcode looks when added to a post …
After publishing the post, your currency conversion will then display as shown in the example below …
Widget
You can also insert currency conversion into your website or blog’s sidebar area using the plugin’s widget.
To add the currency converter to your sidebar area, choose Appearance > Widgets in the WP user admin menu …
In the Widgets > Available Widgets section find the ‘Currencyr’ widget and drag it to the ‘Active Widgets’ area …
Configure the widget options as shown in the screenshot below (add the currency codes you want displaying on your widget separated by a comma), and click Save to save your settings …
The currency converter will now show on the sidebar with the settings you have specified when configuring the widget …
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 multiple currencies.
You can select a different symbol in the ‘Multiple Separator’ settings field.
So, for example, using the default symbol “/” (forward slash) …
Separates all your currency amounts using a forward slash as shown below …
If you enter another symbol and update your settings …
Your website visitors will see the new symbol used as the currency separator …
Integration With e-Commerce Platforms
As described earlier, the Currencyr plugin can be integrated with various WordPress-compatible e-commerce plugins such as WooCommerce, WP-eCommerce, Shopp, and Easy Digital Downloads …
(image source: plugin site)
Congratulations! Now you can go and easily add a currency converter to your WordPress site.
To learn more about WordPress e-commerce plugins, see the tutorial below:
***
"This is an awesome training series. I have a pretty good understanding of WordPress already, but this is helping me to move somewhere from intermediate to advanced user!" - Kim Lednum