Posts

news icon

The ELEX DHL Shipping plugin now supports our Aelia Currency Switcher

DHL Shipping and Currency Switcher, now working together

Updated December 2019

This article was originally published in December 2017. The XAdapter DHL Shipping plugin is now called ELEX DHL Shipping, and it’s developed and maintained by ELEXtensions.

In the past weeks, we have been working with the team at ELEX to add support for our WooCommerce Currency Switcher to their DHL Shipping plugin. The target was to make their shipping plugin more flexible, and to make it possible to interact with the shipping calculation process, to ensure the correct calculation of prices in all currencies.

We are happy to inform you that the integration is now complete. Starting from version 3.4.3, the DHL Shipping plugin includes the filters and actions we added in a modified version to make multi-currency support possible. Thanks to this filter, it’s now possible to interact with the shipping plugin and ensure accurate shipping costs. Sounds great? Good! Keep reading to learn how to implement the solution on your site!

Getting started

Adding multi-currency support to the DHL shipping on your site is a matter of performing three simple steps:

  1. Update the ELEX DHL Shipping plugin. Make sure that you are running version 3.4.3 or later.
  2. Add a simple filter to your theme’s functions.php file, as described in ELEX’s knowledge base:  WooCommerce DHL Express/Paket Shipping Plugin – How to use the DHL shipping plugin with the Currency Switcher plugin. The filter is what allows the DHL plugin and our Currency Switcher to work together, to ensure the accuracy of the shipping calculations.
  3. Alter the filter you just added, replacing the currency in it with the code of your shop’s base currency. For example, if your base currency is EUR, simply replace the “ZAR” from the example with “EUR”.

You’re now ready to go! The custom filter you just added will tell the DHL Shipping plugin to fetch the shipping costs in your shop’s base currency, and our Currency Switcher will take care of converting them to the correct active currency on the cart page and at checkout.

Should you have any questions about using the DHL Shipping with our Currency Switcher, please contact the ELEX Support Team. They will be happy to assist you in configuring their shipping plugin on your site.

Thanks for reading, and have a wonderful day!

The Aelia Team

news icon

We are a proud sponsor of WordCamp Dublin 2017!

Short and sweet: we just received the confirmation that our sponsorship for WordCamp Dublin 2017 has been approved. If you would like to meet us in person, our founder will be there on the 14th and 15th October, and he will be happy to answer any questions you might have. He won’t be a speaker this time, but don’t worry: he’s still a chatterbox, and you will have plenty of time to talk about (almost) anything. Here you can find a super-short summary of the important information.

Where

The event will be held in DCU Business School, Dublin. The DCU Business School is a fantastic venue, and the institute is in the top 5% of business schools worldwide.

When

The WordCamp event will be held on October 14th and 15th 2017. So far, 250 WordPress enthusiasts confirmed their presence, it’s going to be an amazing event.

Less than a month to go, tickets are running out. Get yours, and come and meet us and hundreds of other awesome folks at WordCamp Dublin 2017!

The Aelia Team

news icon

RightPress Dynamic Pricing and Discounts now supports our Aelia Currency Switcher

Dynamic pricing rules and multi-currency, together

The RightPress Team informed us that their powerful Dynamic Pricing and Discounts plugin for WooCommerce now supports our leading multi-currency solution, the Aelia Currency Switcher. This is an excellent improvement for their already great product. It will allow merchants to configure flexible discount rules for their multi-currency shop.

The support for our WooCommerce Currency Switcher is included in Dynamic Pricing and Discounts since version 2.0, available now. You can get this great product from CodeCanyon, at a fantastic price!

We would like to thank the RightPress Team for the great work they did to support our multi-currency solution. Their hard work will help thousands of merchants to have a powerful and flexible shop, to cover the needs of their international customers. Their collaborative spirit sets a great example, that we hope many other developers will follow.

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

The Aelia Team

news icon

Currency Switcher 4.x is now available, supporting WooCommerce 2.7

Currency Switcher 4.x is available!

As announced last week, we are delighted to announce that we have just released our next major update for our popular Currency Switcher for WooCommerce. As anticipated, this version includes support for WooCommerce 2.7, and has been tested with the Release Candidate of that version.

Several of our customers opted for a preliminary test and received the new release in advance. They are now enjoying the benefits and improvements it introduces, and they are pleased of how well it works.

Here you can find a list to recap main features in this new version.

Compatibility with WooCommerce 2.7

The latest version of the Currency Switcher is compatible with the new features introduced in WooCommerce 2.7. We tested our plugin against WC 2.7 Beta 1, back in December 2016, then again with the Beta 2 and the Release Candidate version. The results have been great. Of course, we will keep testing it and address any glitch that we will find.

Optimised code, taking advantage of the Aelia Foundation Classes library

Our Aelia Foundation Classes (AFC, for short) is indeed the foundation of most of our plugins. The mini-framework we designed is flexible enough to allow us to keep the main plugins small and lean.

Also, thanks to the features in the AFC, our products can easily check the system for missing requirements, and even install other plugins they might need, with a single click. We consider ourselves “pioneers”: in an environment where packaging bulky frameworks with each plugin is common practice, we went for lean plugins, shared libraries and dependency management. It wasn’t easy, but it worked!

Better performance

We optimised the currency conversion logic in the Currency Switcher to make it easier to use it on shops with a large number of products. The currency conversion logic is now up to 80% faster. This is especially visible on sites with a high number of variable products and/or of variations.

Improved logging

To keep in line with our “lead the way philosophy”, in July 2016 we developed a flexible logging system, which we are going to use in all our plugins. Our new logger  is PSR-3 compliant, powerful and flexible. We were pleased to hear that WooCommerce 2.7 will introduce a similar logger system, as it’s a proof that we have been, and we still are, on the right track. Our plugins will keep using our own logger, and the two systems will live next to each other, transparently.

Improved geolocation

The Aelia Foundation Classes framework loads version 2 of the MaxMind Geolocation database. The database supports a finer granularity than the one included with WooCommerce. That’s what makes it possible to detect not only countries, but also provinces/states/counties and, in some cases, cities. We have been using it in our Prices by Country and Tax Display by Country plugin for over a year, with great results.

Improved reports

We extended the reporting capabilities of the Currency Switcher to allow running reports filtered by currency. Each report will show the exact total of sales made in each currency. Thanks to this feature, it will be easier to find out which currency generates the most sales, and adjust your sale strategy.

Here are some screenshots of the new reports:

Currency Switcher 4.x - Sales report in EUR

The new sales report in the Currency Switcher 4.x, showing the sales made in EUR

Currency Switcher 4.x - Sales report in USD

The new sales report in the Currency Switcher 4.x, showing the sales made in USD

New shortcodes

The Currency Switcher 4.x includes a couple of new, handy shortcodes. You can use them to convert arbitrary values in on the page, or show a product price in the active currency, anywhere on your site. Here’s a brief description of how they work, together with a “live” example.

Try selecting a currency, on the right sidebar, and the values in bold will change automatically.

It’s now possible to force the currency by shipping country

We added the “force currency by billing country” to the Currency Switcher over two years ago, albeit reluctantly. For those not familiar with it, the feature allows customers to select a currency indirectly. Instead of going for the currency, they can select a billing country, and the currency changes to the one used in such country. Since we received several requests to allow binding the currency to the shipping country, we added such option to the new release.

Currency Switcher 4.x - Force currency by shipping country

The Currency Switcher 4.x allows to force currency by shipping country, as well as billing country.

Currencies can now be sorted in the settings page

Some of our customers asked if it would be possible to sort the enabled currencies without having to resort to a filter. We listened to our clients, and such feature is now part of the Currency Switcher. Here’s a preview of the interface that allows the sorting:

Currency Switcher 4.x - Sort currencies

Drag the handle of each currencies to change their order, then save the settings the new sorting.

Of course, if you implemented a  filter for your custom sorting, you can keep using it, it will work just fine.

Dropped support for WooCommerce 2.3 and earlier

The Aelia Team is known for its skill in keeping full backward compatibility in all our products, even after adding or improving existing features. Our Currency Switcher 3.x was fully compatible with WooCommerce from version 2.1.x until 2.6.x, and worked seamlessly on each of those version. After a careful analysis, we realised that WooCommerce 2.3 and earlier have practically disappeared from the market. Thus, keeping the code to support those versions makes little sense. Due to this, the Currency Switcher 4.x now requires WooCommerce 2.4 or newer.

Integrations with 3rd party plugins are now external addons

The Currency Switcher used to include integrations with several 3rd party plugins. We quickly realised that, even though such solution looked convenient, the integrations don’t belong there, as not every merchant needs them. Thus, we decided to extract each integration to a separate, lightweight plugin, so that the user can install only the needed ones. The integrations will work the ones we released so far, supporting plugins such as Subscriptions, Bundles, Composite Products, Product Add-ons and, more recently, Dynamic Pricing.

To make sure that users are aware of the changes, the Currency Switcher will inform merchants when an integration is no longer included in the main plugin. The Currency Switcher will also explain how to download the replacement integration.

When will the Currency Switcher 4.x be available?

The Currency Switcher 4.x is a available now! 🙂

Will I have to pay for the new version?

If you are an existing customer, with an active licence, you can download the Currency Switcher 4.x free of charge. Simply go to the My Account section and you will find the link to download it.

If you are not yet a customer, or if your licence expired, please contact us to get the best deal to get the new version of our product.

As always, please feel free to send us any feedback you have about this new version. We would like to thank you in advance for taking the time to write us, as your feedback is what allows us to provide you with top class solutions.

Thanks for reading, and for your continued support and renewed custom.

Sincerely,

The Aelia Team

news icon

Announcing Currency Switcher 4.x, with support for WooCommerce 2.7

Currency Switcher 4.0 is coming, with great improvements

We are reviewing and updating our popular Currency Switcher for WooCommerce, in preparation for the upcoming release of WooCommerce 2.7. Our next major version will be 4.0, and it will include several updates and enhancements, which you can find listed below.

Several of our customers are already enjoying the benefits of this new release, and we received great feedback about the improvements we introduced. Here is a list of the major changes that the Currency Switcher 4.0 will bring.

Compatibility with WooCommerce 2.7

We updated the Currency Switcher to make it compatible with the new features introduced in WooCommerce 2.7. Tests of the new release against WC 2.7 Beta 1 and Beta 2 are completed, and the results have been great. We will keep testing it, to “iron all the kinks”, and ensure a smooth transition from WooCommerce 2.6 to 2.7

Optimised code, using our powerful Aelia Foundation Classes library

Several months ago, we decided to extract libraries and classes that were shared by our plugins, and move them to an external plugin, called the Aelia Foundation Classes. Then, we redesigned our products to use this new library. It was a bold move, but it paid off. Our customers are impressed by the efficiency of such solution, which allows us to keep our software small and lean. We also developed a smart dependency checker is able to detect any missing dependency and install it with one click.

We understand that it’s uncommon, in the WordPress environment, to have plugins depend on frameworks or other plugins, but that is going to change in the future. Dependencies are common in most other frameworks and Content Management Systems, and having to install a single extra plugin is a small price to pay in return for more efficient solutions. Smart dependency management is now a reality!

Better performance

The number of large WooCommerce sites is increasing constantly. In order to allow merchants who run large shops to take advantage of our multi-currency solutions, we reviewed the performance of the core elements of the Currency Switcher. The new currency conversion logic is now up to 80% faster, especially on sites with a high number of variable products, and a large number of variations.

Improved logging

At Aelia, we like to consider ourselves pioneers in introducing great and useful features. When we heard that WooCommerce 2.7 will also introduce a new logging system, we had a moment of pride: we introduced an equally flexible, if not more powerful, logging system in our Aelia Foundation Classes, back in Q3 2016. Our new logging system will be used by all our plugins, running in parallel to the one added to WooCommerce, without interfering with it. It will make it possible for us to assist your customers more effectively, and troubleshoot issues quickly.

Improved geolocation

The Aelia Foundation Classes includes version 2 of the MaxMind Geolocation database, which is updated automatically, on a weekly basis. This is the same database that our Tax Display by Country and Prices by Country plugins already use, which is more flexible than the one used in Currency Switcher 3.x.

Improved reports

Following our valued customers’ feedback, we extended the reporting capabilities of the Currency Switcher. Reports can now show sales filtered by currency, showing the exact total of sales made in each currency. Such feature will make it easy to find out which currency generates the most sales, and adjust sale strategies accordingly.

You can find some screenshots of the new reports below:

Currency Switcher 4.x - Sales report in EUR

The new sales report in the Currency Switcher 4.x, showing the sales made in EUR

Currency Switcher 4.x - Sales report in USD

The new sales report in the Currency Switcher 4.x, showing the sales made in USD

New shortcodes

The Currency Switcher 4.x includes new shortcodes that can be used to convert arbitrary values in on the page, as well as displaying a product price in the active currency anywhere on the site. You can see them in action below.

Try selecting a currency, on the right sidebar, to see the above value changes.

Support for forcing currency by shipping country

The “force currency by billing country” feature was introduced long ago. As the name implies, it allows to force the active currency to the one used in the billing country selected by the customer. Although we normally recommend not to use such feature (the Currency Switcher wad designed to grant customers the freedom to choose the currency in which they want to pay), we have received several requests to extend it, and now the currency selection can be tied to the shipping country, rather than the billing one.

Currency Switcher 4.x - Force currency by shipping country

The Currency Switcher 4.x allows to force currency by shipping country, as well as billing country.

End of support for WooCommerce 2.3 and earlier

At Aelia, we pride ourselves in our ability to include backward compatibility in all our products. Our Currency Switcher 3.x is fully compatible with WooCommerce from version 2.1.x until 2.6.x. Despite such impressive feat, we realised that WooCommerce 2.3 and earlier versions are rarely in use, and maintaining the code to support it makes little sense. Due to this. the Currency Switcher 4.x will require WooCommerce 2.4 or later.

Separation of integrations with 3rd party plugins

Some of the integrations with 3rd party plugins are currently part of the Currency Switcher’s core, although they don’t belong there. They were originally included in our main product as a temporary, quick patch, and it’s now time for some housekeeping. We will progressively extract the integrations to separate plugins, like the ones we released for the Subscriptions, Bundles, Composite Products and Product Add-ons plugins.

To make sure that users are aware of the changes, the Currency Switcher will notify the site administrator when an integration has been removed from it, and propose an alternative solution to it.

When will the Currency Switcher 4.x be available?

The Currency Switcher 4.x is already stable, and can be used on WooCommerce 2.6 (we have been using it on our own site for months now). It also works fine with WooCommerce 2.7 Beta 2, which is the latest public release. We plan to release our major update when WooCommerce 2.7 reaches Release Candidate 1, to make sure that we can address any glitch that might have “slipped through the cracks.”

Will I have to pay for the new version?

If you are an existing customer, with an active licence, the upgrade to version 4.x of the Currency Switcher will be free of charge. If you wish to try the new version before its official release, please contact us. We will be happy to send you the updated version.

If you are not yet a customer, or if your licence expired, and you would like to try our powerful multi-currency solution, simply buy the Currency Switcher and contact us afterwards to receive the free update to version 4.x.

As always, we will be grateful for any feedback you can give us, as it allows us to improve our products.

It was a long read, but we hope it was worth it. Thanks for dedicating us your time, we are looking forward to the new, exciting update!

Sincerely,

The Aelia Team