How To Add Currency Conversion In WordPress

Learn how to easily add currency conversion to your WordPress website or blog using a free WordPress plugin called Currencyr …

Adding Currency Conversion To WordPressDo you plan to set up an e-commerce website using WordPress, or sell any products globally? If so, then you may want to consider providing your prospects with currency conversion.

Currency conversion allows your visitors to have the cost of an international currency amount converted into their local currency at the point of sale. It also allows visitors to see the exact amount their credit card or PayPal account will be charged, expressed in their local currency.

The obvious advantage of adding currency conversion to your website is that it lets your customers view and understand prices in foreign countries in their own home currency, and makes it easier for customers to calculate their costs and expenses.

Fortunately, if you are a WordPress user, it’s simple to add a currency converter to your WP website, allowing your customers to quickly and easily work out the cost of your goods.

Currencyr – Currency Converting Tool For WordPress

Currencyr - Free Currency Converting Tool For WordPress

Currencyr is an intuitive, easy-to-use and complete currency converter plugin with a visually attractive converter tooltip. It’s also free!

The Currencyr currency conversion plugin includes advanced features like the following:

  • Inline conversion tool
  • Supports various exchange rates providers, such as Google, Open Exchange Rates & European Central Bank
  • WP-Cron task scheduler enabled
  • Currency table and converter widget
  • Supports integration with various e-store plugins such as WP-eCommerce & Easy Digital Downloads.
  • Automatic local currency detection
  • Full language translation support

Important: The Currencyr plugin needs PHP 5.3.0 or later. Do not install this plugin if you currently have an older version of PHP installed. Alternatively, ask your web host to update your PHP server installation.

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You can install the plugin from your WordPress admin area by searching for “currencyr” in the Plugins section and clicking the ”Install Now” button …

WP Plugin - Currency Conversion

After installing and activating the plugin, you can access the plugin’s settings page by choosing Currencyr from your administration navigation menu …

WordPress Plugin - Currency Converter

This takes you to the plugin settings page …

WordPress Plugin - Currencyr

For example, you can choose a base currency from a dropdown menu if you prefer to use a different currency than the default option ‘United States Dollar – (USD)’ …

WordPress Plugin - Currencyr

You can also specify a data provider from a drop-down menu. The default option is Yahoo Finance, but you can also choose one of the other options, like European Central Bank or Google Finance …

WP Plugin - Currency Converter

Note: If you select ‘Open Exchange Rates’ as your provider, an API (Application Programming Interface) is required …

WP Plugin - Currency Converter

You can choose how often you want to update the exchange rates by selecting an option from the Update Rates dropdown menu …

WP Plugin - Currency Conversion

The Currencyr plugin uses jQuery, which lets web developers add things like animation effects to web applications (e.g. WordPress plugins).

Unless there is a reason to modify the jQuery settings, simply ignore this option …

WordPress Plugin - Currency Converter

Edit the rest of the plugin settings and don’t forget to click the Save Changes button when finished …

WP Plugin - Currency Converter

After you have configured your settings, you can easily add currency conversion to your WP posts and pages using shortcodes and widgets.

Refer to the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section below to learn more about using currency codes (e.g. USD, NZD, CAD, etc …) in this plugin.

How To Use Plugin Shortcodes

You can easily insert currency conversion into posts, pages and widgets with no web coding skills or knowledge 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 are selling goods for a fixed price (e.g. $175) in US Dollars (USD), and you want to display your price converted into British pounds (GBP) on your product information page.

All you need to do is add the following shortcode into your post or page …

WordPress Plugin - Currencyr

Note: You can also insert pricing in dollars and cents (e.g. 6.95, 97.00, 399.99, etc …)

The screenshot below shows how your shortcode will look when inserting it into your product page …

WordPress Plugin - Currency Converter

After your page or post has been published, your currency conversion will appear like this …

WordPress Plugin - Currency Conversion

Using the above example, let’s now display the same amount into multiple currency formats.

To do this, use the shortcode shown below (add as many currency symbols as you want by using vertical pipes) …

WordPress Plugin - Currency Converter

You can see how the shortcode appears when added to a post …

WordPress Plugin - Currencyr

After publishing the page, your currency conversion will then appear as you can see in the example below …

WordPress Plugin - Currencyr

refer to the ‘Additional Plugin Notes’ section below to learn how to change the currency separator symbol with the Currencyr plugin.

Now, suppose you would like to use a different base currency than the one set as the default.

For example, say you have set your default base currency as EUR and you have a section on your e-commerce pages targeted to customers from countries like Australia or Canada, you can change the base currency using the following shortcode …

WP Plugin - Currencyr

The example below shows how the above shortcode looks when you add it to a post …

WordPress Plugin - Currency Conversion

After publishing the page or post, the converted currency amounts will then display like this …

WordPress Plugin - Currencyr

Using The Widget

You can also insert currency conversion into your website or blog’s sidebar menu using the Currencyr widget.

To add currency conversion to your sidebar, choose Appearance > Widgets from the WP dashboard menu …

WP Menu: Appearance > Widgets

In the Widgets > Available Widgets area find the ‘Currencyr’ widget and add it to an ‘Active Widgets’ area …

WP Plugin - Currency Conversion

Configure the widget settings as shown in the screenshot below (add currency codes separated by commas), and click Save to update your settings …

WordPress Plugin - Currency Conversion

Your currency converter will now display on the sidebar with the settings you have specified …

WP Plugin - Currencyr

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 change the symbol in the ‘Multiple Separator’ settings field.

So, for example, using the default symbol “/” (forward slash) …

WordPress Plugin - Currency Conversion

Separates all your currency amounts with the forward slash as shown below …

WP Plugin - Currencyr

If you modify the symbol and resave your plugin settings …

WP Plugin - Currencyr

Your site visitors will see the new symbol display as the currency separator …

WordPress Plugin - Currency Conversion

WP E-Commerce

As described earlier, the plugin integrates with various WP-compatible e-commerce plugins such as WooCommerce, WP-eCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads …

WordPress Plugin - Currencyr

(image source: plugin site)

And there you have it! Now you know how to easily add a currency converter to your WordPress site.

To learn more about WordPress e-commerce plugins, see the tutorial below:

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"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

Originally published as How To Add Currency Conversion In WordPress.