Building a Web Site For Dummies®, 3rd Edition

Converting Currencies

Whatever you’re up to with e-commerce, your audience is global. Even if that’s not your intent, you’re going to have potential customers who aren’t necessarily familiar with the current value of the U.S. dollar. Is there a solution? Oh, yeah. A really good one.

The Universal Currency Converter (UCC) from XE.com is a must-have for any commercial site that expects to handle international business. Like most free services, it has a banner ad built into it, but you can negotiate with XE.com to remove it for a fee. The converter lets anyone convert any amount in any currency to the equivalent amount in any other currency.

The basic module has only the major world currencies in it. Don’t sweat it, though; if you need to include others, it doesn’t cost you anything. This limitation is only for practical reasons. After all, nearly every transaction takes place in one of the top currencies, and the more options you add, the slower things get. Really, how often do you need to figure out how many Seborga luiginos are equal to 800 Uzbekistan soms?

Adding the converter to your Web page

To add the converter to your Web page, follow these steps:

1.	Go to www.xe.net/ucc/customize.php.
2.	Read through the terms of use.
3.	Fill out the required form with your URL and contact information. Notice that the URL must be the address of the Web page on which you will actually put the converter, not just the general URL of your domain.
4.	Click the Go! button. You need to register ...