news icon

Aelia plugins – Performance improvements and PHP 8.2 compatibility

In this post, we’re going to discuss the improvements we made to our products to deal with the breaking changes introduced by PHP 8.2, as well as the possible issues that you might encounter. If you’re not familiar with the PHP programming languages and the technical aspects of WordPress and WooCommerce, we recommend to involve your developer to fully understand the topics we will cover.

news icon

The Aelia Shipping Pricing Addon is now included in the Aelia Currency Switcher

We are pleased to announce that the Aelia Shipping Pricing plugin, originally distributed as a separate addon for the Aelia Currency Switcher, will been bundled with the main plugin starting from version 4.11.x of the Currency Switcher. We took the decision of merging the two plugins after reviewing our sale statistics. The vast majority of our customers use both plugins together, therefore it made sense to release them as a single product.

This new distribution model brings several advantages:

  1. Easier maintenance. The licence for the Currency Switcher covers both the main plugin and the addon, so you won’t have to remember to renew two of them.
  2. Easier updates. The Shipping Pricing addon will “follow” the Currency Switcher at every update, reducing the chance of issues caused by old versions that were not updated.
  3. Lower price. The Aelia Currency Switcher with the Shipping Pricing addon included is cheaper than the current price of the two separate plugins.

What this means for our customers

If you’re using the Aelia Currency Switcher with the Shipping Pricing Addon as a separate plugin, you will soon see a notice informing you that the addon has been bundled with the Currency Switcher. The notice will look like the following:

The plugin “Aelia Shipping Pricing for Currency Switcher” is now included with the Aelia Currency Switcher

This plugin is now included in the Aelia Currency Switcher and no longer has to be installed separately. You can go to the Plugins page, then disable and remove plugin “Aelia Shipping Pricing for Currency Switcher”. Its features will remain available, as they were before.

As indicated in the message, you will just have to go to WordPress Admin > Plugins and disable the Shipping Pricing Addon. The features originally provided by that plugin will remain available via the Currency Switcher, exactly as they were before.

If you’re using only the Currency Switcher, you won’t have to do anything. You will just find the new features in the WooCommerce > Settings > Shipping page, after opening a shipping zone. Below you can find some screenshots of the Shipping Pricing Addon in action:

How this affects your licences

Your licence for the Aelia Currency Switcher will allow you to download the new version, including the Shipping Pricing features, automatically. When the licence for the Shipping Pricing addon  will expire, you will not have to do anything. In fact, you can simply delete the Shipping Pricing addon from your site after updating the Currency Switcher. As indicated, the main plugin now includes all the features from the shipping addon.

Any questions?

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us, we ill be ready to assist you.

The Aelia Team

news icon

The Aelia Tax Display by Country plugin is now available directly from our site

The Aelia Tax Display by Country plugin was originally sold via CodeCanyon. We’re currently reorganising our business and, as part of the operation, we are going to consolidate our offer and move all our products to a single, new licensing system. The new system will allow us to manage product licences, updates and support more efficiently, as well as resume sales to UK consumers and non-VAT registered business. As part of the consolidation process, we had to remove the Tax Display by Country plugin from the CodeCanyon marketplace.

The Tax Display by Country plugin is still in active development and compatible with the latest version of WooCommerce. The Aelia Tax Display by Country plugin is currently available directly from our shop: https://aelia.co/shop/tax-display-by-country-for-woocommerce/. When we will move the product to the new licensing system, you will have the option to transfer your licence to it and retain access to our updates and support service.

Update – 04 May 2021 13:00 CEST

Some users reported that the removal of the Tax Display by Country plugin from the CodeCanyon marketplace was sudden. We had planned to announce the change in the next few weeks, and move our Tax Display plugin to the new platform in June. Yesterday, we have been informed that CodeCanyon updated the guidelines for the products sold via their marketplace. Our solution complies with the new guidelines, with the exception of a few minor elements that don’t affect its functionalities. Despite that, the Envato Team chose to disable our product, without warning, pending a review.

Although we understand the new guidelines, and we would be happy to follow them, we don’t agree with the sudden removal of our product from the CodeCanyon marketplace. Our solution runs on thousands of our customers’ sites, and works perfectly with the latest version of WordPress and WooCommerce. We would have appreciated, and considered more professional, if they informed us, and gave us sufficient notice to address the discrepancies.

Due to this, and to the fact that we had already planned to move our product to another platform, we decided to start the migration process immediately. We considered this approach more effective than trying to rush an update, push for a review, and get the product back online on CodeCanyon just for a few weeks.

How this change could affect you

The policies applied by the Envato/CodeCanyon grant access to six months of support from the date of purchase. If you bought the Aelia Tax Display by Country plugin from that marketplace and have an active support service, simply contact us, with your purchase code (see Envato –  Where is my purchase code?). We will provide you with support for the remainder of the covered period.

If you don’t wish to avail of our support service, and you have a valid CodeCanyon purchase code, you can still get access to updates for the Tax Display by Country. To do so, please forward us the original purchase code via our contact form and we will send you the instructions to keep receiving the updates.

What are the differences in terms of licensing, support and updates?

The terms of licensing offered by CodeCanyon are different from the ones that we offer via our website. You can find a quick comparison below.
Result (click “Generate” to refresh) Copy to clipboard Preview

AeliaCodeCanyon
Licence typeGPL . You are allowed to install and activate the plugin on as many sites as you like (see Benefits of the GPL licence)CodeCanyon’s Standard Licence. The licence allowed users to install the plugin on a single site (see https://codecanyon.net/licenses/standard). The terms of sale of the marketplace prohibited using the plugin on multiple sites.
UpdatesAutomatic updates are provided for one site per licence. You can install the plugin on other sites, which you have to have to update manually. The licence includes updates for one year. After that period the licence has to be renewed to receive further updates.Automatic updates were provided for one site per licence. CodeCanyon granted access to updates for the lifetime of the product. “Lifetime” meant until the product was retired, or removed from the CodeCanyon marketplace, as it happened in this case.
SupportThe support service is available for the duration of the licence, which is one year.Access to the support service was available for six months from the date of purchase. It had to be renewed every six months.

Update – October 2021

On the 1st of October, 2021, we moved all our products to the Freemius platform. The same terms described in the Aelia column, above, still apply to the products after the migration.

What happens after the support service bought from CodeCanyon will expire?

When the support service you bought from CodeCanyon will expire, you will just have to get a new licence from our site. This will grant you another year of updates and support.

Any questions?

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us at any time. We will be happy to give you all the information you need. Thanks.

The Aelia Team

Business All-Stars Accreditation Logo 2020-White Background

Aelia Receives All-Star Quality Mark from AIBF for the second year in a row

Our beloved Grinzing, located in one of the most beautiful districts of Vienna, has received a massive boost this week with one of the resident businesses achieving international recognition for excellence, confirming its highest standards of service and trust. Diego Zanella, the founder of Aelia, was awarded the coveted All-Ireland Business All-Star accreditation for the second year in a row. One might ask why an Austrian business, founded by an Italian entrepreneur, would receive such an important accreditation from a foreign country, and it would be a legitimate question. The answer is simple, yet interesting.

Some background story

Diego Zanella founded Aelia in Ireland, in 2013. From the first day, he founder focused all its efforts in producing high quality solutions, and offering top class service, to owner of e-commerce websites. Thanks to the flexibility offered by modern technologies, the business can operate from anywhere in the world, while still keeping in touch with its thousands of customers. Aelia moved around Ireland a couple of times, then, in mid-2019, Diego Zanella planned a relocation to Austria.

The All-Ireland Business Foundation came into play, just in time

At the beginning of the same year, he had submitted Aelia to the selection for the Business All-Star accreditation. He was supposed to receive answer was supposed within a couple of days, and the selection process take a few weeks. However, due to a technical issue, the submission remained “pending” much longer than it should have. As soon as the All-Ireland Business Foundation Team found it, they reviewed the performance of both Aelia and its founder. The score was high enough to place them amongst the top candidates.  Even though our founder informed the AIBF Team of the imminent relocation abroad, they were more than happy to let our application proceed anyway. Then, in October 2019, Diego Zanella received the first Business All-Star accreditation.

In 2020, the AIBF Team contacted our founder again. Although our Aelia and its founder are no longer resident in Ireland, their result were so high that the Foundation offered to make an exception, and participate to the selection again. Diego Zanella was given the opportunity to become the first “ex-indigenous entrepreneur” to be accredited by the All-Ireland Business Foundation.

Obviously, since we’re writing about it, the result was a success. At the end of October 2020 (yes, we’re a bit slow with news), Aelia’s founder received the accreditation certificate, confirming Diego Zanella as a Thought Leader in e-commerce and WooCommerce solutions.

Aelia - Certificate of Accreditation 2020

Aelia – Certificate of Accreditation 2020

Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the Gold Medal Ceremony was replaced by an online event. Our founder, Diego Zanella, attended it on the 30th of October, 2020.

The importance of get accredited for the second year

Like in 2019, we are pleased to have reached the high standard required by the the Business All-Star accreditation. We strive to keep high level of performance, trust and customer satisfaction that distinguishes our offer . Furthermore, we are the first to having been invited to participate into the selection, despite the business being now resident in another EU country, and it feels like a special honour. The All-Ireland Business Foundation is so impressed by our results that they would like to keep us in their register of top class companies. 👍

We would like to thank everyone for your continued support. Our customers, who keep trusting, our business partners, with whom we will be working on more incredible projects and, most importantly, our families.

Thanks again for your invaluable help. We wouldn’t be here, if it weren’t for you. 🙏

The Aelia Team

news icon

Fish and Ships now supports our Aelia Currency Switcher

Configure flexible shipping rules with Fish and Ships

Fish and Ships is a table-rate based plugin for WooCommerce that allows to add custom conditions to calculate shipping costs. Rules such as price, weight, dimensions, volume, shipping class and more are available out of the box. The plugin also allows you to trigger special actions if a rule matches, giving you unprecedented flexibility.

In addition to the already rich feature set, the wpcentrics Team added support for our Aelia Currency Switcher directly in the shipping calculation logic. The integration is fully transparent for the user: after processing the applicable rules, Fish and Ships automatically converts shipping to the active currency, using the exchange rates configured in the Currency Switcher.

Configuring Fish and Ships is easy

The wpcentrics Team sent us with a video that highlights the features included in their solution. In just 8 minutes, you will be able to see how easy it is to configure all the rules you need.

Try Fish and Ships free of charge

There is a free version of the shipping plugin available on the WordPress repository: https://wordpress.org/plugins/fish-and-ships/. You can use it to try the powerful features offered by the plugin, configure the rules in the shop’s base currency. The integration with the Aelia Currency Switcher will activate automatically, when needed, converting all the costs in the active currency.

Conclusion

We are happy to add Fish and Ships to the ever expanding list of plugins that include native support for our Aelia Currency Switcher. With this new shipping plugin, configuring flexible, multi-currency shipping rules will be easier than ever. If you have any questions, or feedback, please feel free to contact the wp centrics Team. They will be happy to hear from you, and ready to assist you with any query you might have.

Thanks again for reading, and see you soon with more exciting news!

The Aelia Team

news icon

Advanced Coupons, by Rymera Web, now supports our Aelia Currency Switcher

Multi-currency offers with Advanced Coupons and Aelia Currency Switcher

Our friend Josh Kohlbach, from the Rymera Web Team, informed us that they released a new version of their Advanced Coupons plugin. This update introduces full compatibility with our multi-currency solution, the Aelia Currency Switcher for WooCommerce.

The challenge with multi-currency coupons

Many of the plugins that handle coupons, or special offers, work with the assumption that the shop will always have one currency. Due to that, they treat all prices as absolute values, and can apply discounts incorrectly in a multi-currency environment. For example:

  • A coupon for 10 USD could reduce the price by an amount of “10”, whether the product price is 100 USD, 90 EUR or 80 GBP. The resulting price would then become 90 USD (correct), 80 EUR (incorrect) and 70 GBP (incorrect).
  • An offer like “buy one, get one for 50 USD” could be interpreted by the coupon plugin as “buy one, get one for 50 USD/EUR/GBP“. The discount in USD would be correct, whereas the others would be wrong.
  • An offer like “free shipping when you spend 50 USD or more” could be interpreted by the coupon plugin as “free shipping when you spend 50 USD/EUR/GBP or more“. That would offer free shipping with the correct order amount in USD, and a higher order amount in EUR and GBP.

In the above scenarios, the error stems from the fact that the amounts entered in USD are taken as absolute values, even when the currency changes. Instead, they should be converted to their EUR and GBP counterparts.

The solution

The Advanced Coupons plugin can solve this issue, thanks to its new, native integration with our Aelia Currency Switcher. As soon as you enable it, the plugin will automatically detect our multi-currency solution and perform the conversion of your discounts, automatically. This is transparent and doesn’t require any configuration.

Is really it that easy? As you can see in the video you find below, it’s indeed easy!

What’s the advantages in using the Advanced Coupons plugin?

The Advanced Coupons plugin includes powerful features that allow you to increase your sales. Among the key features:

  • Add products with a coupon. The customer enters a coupon code, and a product is added to the cart automatically.
  • “Buy one, get one free (or discounted)” offers. Allow customers to buy multiple products, at a reduced price.
  • Shipping discounts. Offer a cheaper, or even free, shipping option when a minimum order total is reached.
  • Loyalty programs. This is a very powerful feature, that few other plugins can offer in a multi-currency environment. It allows your customers to accrue points and spend them later on your shop, while calculating the correct amount of points for each currency. For example, if you offer 1 point for every 1 USD spent, a customer who spends 150 EUR will get approximately 167 points (150 EUR to USD = ~167.45 USD = 167 points).

Multi-currency special offers at your fingertips

If you wish to run special offers on your multi-currency site, in conjunction with our Aelia Currency Switcher, the Advanced Coupons plugin is your solution. Install, enable, and you’re ready to go. On top of that, both solutions are backed by a top notch customer service, ready to assist you with any question you might have. You can also find the announcement of the integration on the official site of the coupons plugin: Multi Currency Aware Coupons With Currency Switcher for WooCommerce.

If you have any questions about the Advanced Coupons plugin and its multi-currency integration, please feel free to contact the Advanced Coupons Team. They will get back to you in no time. 👍

Thanks for reading, and have a great weekend!

The Aelia Team