New WordPress Plugin – LocalCurrency

I’ve been pretty quiet for the last couple of weeks, mainly due to offline endeavours. However, I did find time to finish off a new WordPress plugin called LocalCurrency, that allows you to show currency values to your readers in their local currency.

For example: If a post contains 10 yuan, a user from Australia will see 10 yuan (AUD$1.53), while a US user will see 10 yuan (USD$1.39).

How LocalCurrency Works

LocalCurrency determines the reader’s country (via IP address), gets the current exchange rate from Yahoo! Finance, then calculates the equivalent value in the readers currency for any values in the post. It then updates the post so the reader can see their currency, in brackets after the original value.

All of this is done using ‘AJAX’ techniques so that page load times aren’t affected. Readers can change their currency via a selection box if they desire.

Where Do I Get LocalCurrency?

See the LocalCurrency plugin home page for more information about LocalCurrency, a live example, and to download the plugin.

Why Is It On JobsInChina?

There is one big difference about this plugin, compared to my other plugins. LocalCurrency is a JobsInChina production. That means I’m hosting  it on the JobsInChina.com website. There are several reasons for this:

1. It was written for use on the JobsInChina blog
2. It’s running on that blog, not this one
3. It is more likely to appeal to a higher percentage of visitors to that blog (as many will start their own blog when living in China).
4. Honestly, the backlinks will help JobsInChina. I’ll write more on this in the coming weeks, but a plugin is great at generating backlinks.

This was a hard decision. This is my WordPress plugin site, so it could be argued that all my plugins belong here. Point three swayed the argument. JobsInChina is supposed to provide resources to people wanting to live in China. That includes bloggers!

It’s not all about point four. In fact, I’m sure there are SEO experts out there who’d say that it’d be better to keep the two sites separate and tightly focused. Of course it is possible for a site to be an authority on more than one topic. This blog has some authority for China – it ranks at position 20 for Chinese Hospitality (it used to be on page one, but it’s slipping).

Anyway, I may come to regret the decision, but it’s been made now. I’ll provide any feedback on the SEO impact if it becomes obvious.

Final Thoughts

This was one of the more complicated plugins I’ve written, as it involved JavaScript and ‘AJAX’, but it’s been very satisfying to complete. I’m not expecting it to be a mainstream plugin, but it is handy for people living abroad who often talk about what they’ve spent recently.

Tags: Blogging, China, linking, localcurrency, Wordpress Plugins