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Product updates – Compatibility with the WooCommerce High Performance Order Tables (HPOS) feature

The Aelia plugins are now compatible with WooCommerce High Performance Order Storage (HPOS) feature

We are happy to announce that, starting from the 11th of July, we will be releasing an updated version of all our plugins, which we tested for compatibility with the new HPOS feature provided by WooCommerce.

What is the HPOS feature?

Ad described in the WooCommerce documentation:

High-Performance Order Storage (HPOS) also previously known as “Custom Order Tables” is a solution that provides an easy-to-understand and solid database structure – specifically designed for eCommerce needs. It uses the WooCommerce CRUD design to store order data in custom tables – optimized for WooCommerce queries with minimal impact on the store’s performance.

This new feature aims at improving the performance of the checkout page, as well as the management of orders and generation of reports. Behind the scenes, the HPOS feature relies on new database tables that contain order data, structured in a more efficient way than the “legacy” post tables used by WordPress.

How does the HPOS feature affect the Aelia plugins?

Most of our plugins have been compatible with the HPOS feature for a while, as they rely on the functions provided by WooCommerce to access order data. These functions provide an abstraction layer, which ensures that plugins that call them will receive the expected data once the HPOS feature becomes the standard. We ran a series of tests, to be on the safe side, and we were able to confirm that the logic in our plugins works just fine with the new feature, as well as the legacy tables. We didn’t have to make significant changes to most of our solutions.

The most complex of our plugins, the Aelia Currency Switcher, required more work. That plugin is tightly integrated with the WooCommerce core, and, due to some design choices made to improve its performance, it had to access the database directly in a couple of cases. We rewrote the sections of the plugin that were affected by the upcoming changes and we implemented a fallback mechanism for sites that use the legacy tables. The switch between the two mechanisms is completely transparent to the user, and it occurs automatically when the HPOS feature is enabled or disabled. Thanks to this new architecture, the Currency Switcher is now compatible with the HPOS feature, while still retaining full compatibility with the legacy order tables.

Screenshots

Below you can find a few screenshots showing a couple of changes in the Aelia Currency Switcher interface. Although minor, they were an important step to improve the user experience and to ensure compatibility with the new pages (Edit Order, Orders List, Reports) introduced by the HPOS feature.

Aelia Currency Switcher - HPOS Compatibility - Orders list page

The new Orders List page shows the order totals in the original order currency and in the shop’s base currency, just like the legacy page did.

Aelia Currency Switcher - HPOS Compatibility - Orders import UI

The Currency Switcher now offers a simple interface to import the order data into the sales reports and analytics.

Aelia Currency Switcher - HPOS Compatibility - New install and upgrade logic

We rewrote the installation process to run in the background and process the data more efficiently.

Aelia Currency Switcher - HPOS Compatibility - Action Scheduler

The new installer included in the Currency Switcher relies on the robust Action Scheduler provided by WooCommerce.

What are the steps to enable the HPOS compatibility in the Aelia plugins?

The new versions of our plugins will enable the HPOS compatibility automatically, as soon as you install them. All our plugins retain full backward compatibility with the legacy order tables.

When will the updates become available?

As anticipated, we started rolling out the updates for our plugins on the 11th of July. You will see a notification in your WordPress dashboard when the new version of a plugin becomes available for your site.

💡 Important

The HPOS feature has been available since WooCommerce 7.1 and it changed slightly since its first release. Our tests indicate that the new feature is stable, and that our plugins work fine with it. However, we always recommend to test all the updates on a staging copy of your site first. We also recommend to take a full backup of your live site before enabling that feature on it, just to have an additional “safety net” in case of unexpected issue. If you encounter any issue, or come across an edge case scenario, please reach out to us, and we will look into it as soon as possible.

Conclusion

This new update will help your WooCommerce shop grow, thanks to the improved performance. The Aelia plugin will integrate seamlessly with the new High Performance logic and offer a smooth experience to both you and your customers.

Any questions?

As always, if you have any questions, or need assistance using our solutions, please feel free to contact us. We will be happy to assist you.

 

The Aelia Team

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A recommendation from our colleagues at Ays Pro Plugins

Aelia Currency Switcher review – Recommended as the first choice

Our colleagues at Ays Pro Plugins contacted us a while ago, while they were conducting a survey about the best multi-currency plugins available for WooCommerce. Understandably, considering the number of solutions currently of the market, it took them a while, but the results are finally in. Our Aelia Currency Switcher came out right on top. From their summary:

In summary, the Aelia Currency Switcher for WooCommerce is a must-have tool for any online store looking to expand its global reach and boost sales. With its powerful features, easy setup, top-class support service, and decades of software engineering experience behind it, the Aelia Currency Switcher is a reliable and effective solution for any online store looking to cater to customers from around the world.

You can find the full review here: Ays Pro Plugins – Best WooCommerce Multi Currency Plugins of 2023. We’re delighted to see that our efforts are appreciated by clients and colleagues alike. We will strive to continue offering top class solutions to our clients, as well as unparalleled customer service. As always, we are open to collaboration with other developers who wish to join us in our efforts. Together, we can make the WooCommerce world the best place to run an online shop.

 

Sponsored content

Introducing the Quiz Maker plugin for WordPress

The Ays Pro Plugins Team offer an interesting suite of products for WordPress, tailored towards websites that offer study courses and need to run quizzes or collect feedback from the students. You can find the full suite of products here: https://ays-pro.com/wordpress. From that list, we chose a plugin that impressed us for its feature set, the WordPress plugin for Quiz.

Quiz Maker - Header

Why use a quiz plugin on your site?

If you run a site for students, or even just for fun, to tease your audience, it’s important to have an easy way to create engaging questionnaires. The Quiz Maker is a great tool for creating different types of quizzes, quickly and easily. The plugin allows you to build several types quizzes, like the following:

  • Personality tests
  • Scored quizzes
  • IQ tests
  • Assessment tests
  • Multiple-choice quizzes
  • Trivia quizzes
  • Buzzfeed quizzes

Abd more. The Quiz Maker offers extensive styling features, to make the interface blend smoothly with your existing site. The user interface is simple to use, responsive, and configurable.

What about cheaters?

Cheating is as old as quizzes. In fact, it was probably invented a few minutes after the first questionnaire. To prevent cheating during online exams and tests, the Quiz Maker allows you to create timer-based exams., which make it harder for a dishonest test taker to search for answers. The quiz plugin also include a content protection function to deter copying.

With great answers should come great rewards

Students like to be rewarded for reaching a good score. The Quiz Maker allows you to send customisable certificates to your examinees after they pass a test. A certificate can be automatically emailed to test takers, and it can also be used as an opportunity to generate leads to bring them back to your site. In addition to that, you can also publish a chart with the results, to give your audience an immediate understanding of how well they did. The good old “bragging rights” can be another powerful tool to keep your audience engaged.

If you need to charge fees for a test, Quiz Maker got you covered

Thanks to PayPal integration with the Quiz Maker plugin, you can create paid quizzes and questionnaires and apply the necessary fees before your students take their test.

Robust integrations bring your quizzes farther

The Quiz Maker includes numerous integrations, including Google Sheets, MailChimp, PayPal, Zapier, Stripe, ActiveCampaign, WooCommerce, Campaign Monitor, and Slack. You can use them to share your quizzes, invite your users to participate to them, or measure their engagement. The extensive integration features have you covered.

In conclusion, the Quiz Maker plugin is an ideal too for anyone who needs to cater to an audience of students, or users who like to have fun with entertaining quizzes. If you have any questions, the Ays Pro Plugins Team will be happy to answer them, and review any feature request you might have.

 

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

The Aelia Team

 

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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

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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

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Smart Offers now supports our Aelia Currency Switcher

Increase your conversions with Smart Offers and Aelia Currency Switcher

We are happy to announce the start of a new collaboration, this time with the StoreApps Team. This collaboration brings you another great solution, the Smart Offers plugin. Smart Offers makes it easy to manage up-sells, cross-sells and “buy one, get one free offers”, and now it also includes native support for our popular multi-currency solution, the Aelia Currency Switcher.

Thanks to this new integration, visitors will see up-sells, cross-sells and special offers in their currency of choice. This will improve the user experience, and can help increasing conversions.

Getting started

The Smart Offers plugin integration with the Currency Switcher works out of the box. When you install the two plugins together, Smart Offers will automatically take care of showing your special offers in the correct currency. No configuration is required, it just works!

Advantages of using Smart Offers with Aelia Currency Switcher

Targeting rules, filters and more

Smart Offers includes features like targeting of offers based on user role, past purchases or cart value. All such features integrate automatically with the functions offered by the Aelia Currency Switcher, such as automatic geolocation and price conversions. All special offers will be appear consistently with customer’s location and selected currency.

Revenue reports in the selected currency

Smart Offers will automatically show you, in its Orders dashboard, the revenue earned from running the offer in each of the currencies selected by your visitors. This will help preparing statistics on which offers are more successful, and in which currency. With that information, you will be able to prepare accurately targeted offers and increase your conversion.

Conclusion

Using the Aelia Currency Switcher and the Smart Offers plugin together can greatly help increasing the effectiveness of your up-sells and cross-sells offers. The two plugin together will enable you to prepare offers targeted to specific markets, and attract more sales.

If you are using the two solutions together, we will be happy to hear your feedback, so that we can continue improving our products. Should you have any questions about using Smart Offers with our Currency Switcher, please feel free to contact the StoreApps support team. They will be ready to assist you with the installation of their powerful “special offers” solution.

That’s all, for now. I hope you enjoyed this great news, and we wish you a fantastic weekend!

The Aelia Team

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The StorePep Shipping Solution now supports our Aelia Currency Switcher

Using StorePep with Aelia Currency Switcher

We have partnered with the StorePep Team, to bring you yet one more great solution for your WooCommerce shop. The StorePep Shipping solution now includes native support for our WooCommerce Currency Switcher. With this solution, you can now ship globally using popular shipping carriers like FedEx, UPS, DHL and more. StorePep will charge the correct fees, in the currency used by your customers to complete the checkout.

Getting started

StorePep, along with Aelia Currency Switcher delivers a seamless shopping experience for your customers. You can combine configure StorePep by simply following these easy steps:

  1. Install and configure the Aelia Currency Switcher. Our installation guide can help you configuring the plugin: Aelia Currency Switcher – Getting Started.
  2. Install and configure StorePep, by following a few, simple steps: Integrate Your WooCommerce Online Store with StorePep.
  3. Verify that StorePep is working, by checking that the correct shipping rates appear at checkout.

You’re ready to go! StorePep will now calculate shipping costs, and the the Aelia Currency Switcher will convert them to the active currency.

Should you have any questions about using StorePep with our Currency Switcher, please contact the StorePep Support Team. They will be happy to help you configuring their shipping solution.

Thanks for reading, and have a great day!

The Aelia Team