Posts

Currency Switcher – WebServiceX is down, please use Open Exchange Rates

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WebServiceX, one of the exchange rates providers supported by the Currency Switcher for WooCommerce, went down today due to a server issue. Attempting to retrieve an exchange rate from it would return an error message, which, hopefully, should be fixed soon (apparently, their server ran out of disk space). This means that, if you configured the Currency Switcher to use WebServiceX to automatic update the exchange rates, it won’t work. Unfortunately, the plugin can’t do anything about the issue, since it depends on an external server, but there are a few steps you can take to get your site back to normal:

  1. Go to the Administration section of your site and open the Currency Switcher Options page.
  2. Switch to Open Exchange Rates as the exchange rates provider. It requires an API key, which can be obtained free of charge using their Free Forever plan.
  3. Click on Save and update exchange rates. This will fetch the exchange rates from the provider and update them automatically.
  4. Update the Currency Switcher plugin to version 1.9.22.130827 or later, which improves the handling of abnormal conditions that may occur while retrieving the exchange rates.

All done! Your site will be now operational again, and you won’t have to worry about downtime of exchange rates provider.

Currency Switcher 2.0 with multiple currency pricing – Progress update

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Over a month has passed since I announced the development of Currency Switcher 2.0 with multi pricing capabilities and I think it’s time to give an update about the progress. The multi-pricing feature is currently being tested and a Beta version of the plugin will be released in the second half of August 2013.

As indicated in the original announcement, version 2.0 of the Currency Switcher will implement multi-pricing on WooCommerce 2.0.x. While it is possible that such feature will work on WooCommerce 1.6.x as well, not much testing is going to be performed on such environment at this stage.

Multi-pricing screenshots

Here are see a couple of screenshots showing the multi-pricing feature in action.

How to get Currency Switcher 2.0 Beta version

When Currency Switcher 2.0 Beta will become available, an announcement will be posted on this site. The new version it will be distributed together with version 1.x. A separate download link for version 2.0 Beta will be provided with every purchase, giving the possibility of downloading and installing either one.

If you already purchased the plugin, you received an order confirmation with just the link to version 1.x of the plugin. In such case, simply contact Support to request an updated order confirmation, which will contain the second link.

Please note that, as per Terms and Conditions of sale, Beta versions are not covered by free support. It’s therefore recommended not to use Beta versions in production.

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

Diego

Currency Switcher for WooCommerce – GeoIP feature to be rewritten

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In the past days, a few Users reported poor performance on their websites when they used the Currency Switcher plugin with the GeoIP feature enabled. After an in-depth investigation, the culprit seems to be the fact that, in some circumstances, the remote service used to provide live IP-to-Geolocation takes a long time to respond (sometimes, up to 10 seconds). This, of course, has an impact on the Currency Switcher plugin and on the website where it is running.

The Solution

To prevent this issue from occurring in the future, I’m going to rewrite the code that provides the GeoIP functionality, so that it won’t have to rely on an external website anymore. This will bring a performance improvement and ensure a consistent experience.

I will give this task a high priority, to make sure that a new version can be released soon. Meanwhile, if you experience a slowdown on your website, please disable the GeoIP feature and see if the situation improves. If not, please contact Support using the link on the top left of this page. Thanks.

Update – 15/07/2013

GeoIP feature rewrite is complete and a new version of the plugin has been released.

Currency Switcher 2.0 is coming, supporting multiple prices

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Update: Currency Switcher 2.0 is now available!

Version 2 of Currency Switcher plugin is in development, with the objective of implementing the most requested feature so far, which is the possibility of manually specifying multiple prices for a product (one for each of the enabled currencies).

Due to several key differences between WooCommerce 2.0.x  and 1.6.x, the feature will be implemented in two phases:

  • Phase 1: the feature will be available for WooCommerce 2.0.x only.
  • Phase 2: the feature will be available also for WooCommerce 1.6.x.

More details about the progress, including the planned release date, will be published soon.

Special Thanks

I would like to take the opportunity to thank all the Customers who purchased the plugin for their support and their invaluable feedback, which allowed me to make it the five star product it is today. I will make sure to meet your expectations again, and make good use of all the information you provided.

See you soon with more good news!

Diego

Awards/Badges for Vanilla Forums (Preview Release) has been released!

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Kind of a late update, as the Preview Release was distributed on 07/04/2013 to the Users who registered their interest in becoming early adopters. Just a couple of days passed, and I already received tons of valuable feedback from them. The response, so far, has been enthusiastic, and I’m working to make the Awards Plugin even better.

What’s next?

Next release will be ready soon, with several bug fixes and new features, one of which will be the ability of importing and exporting Awards/Badges and Award Classes in a couple of clicks. This will introduce the possibility of creating Awards sets that can be shared with other Vanilla Forums owners.

Also, the Awards plugin is just the first step in the creation of a complete Reputation Management System for Vanilla Forums, which will include highly sought after features, such as Reactions and Ranks (currently in development).

The date of the Preview Release 2 will be announced soon, so keep an eye on our site!

Vanilla Badges – Update

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Due to an issue beyond my control, I could not meet the deadline for Preview Release for Vanilla Awards (Badges). The release is now scheduled after Easter, on 06/04/2013.

I will use the additional time to fix some issues I found and to add some more features to the plugin. One of them, the Awards Leaderboard is complete (screenshot below).

I would like to thank all the readers who registered for the Preview Release and apologies for the delay. I wish all of you a great Easter!

Awards Leaderboard screenshot

Awards - Leaderboard