Unit Conversion

See the Unit Conversion feature in action

Setting up the Unit Conversion Feature

After installing the Pro Bundle, go to the WP Recipe Maker > Settings > Unit Conversion page to set up the Unit Conversion feature.

You can define 2 unit systems: one is the default you're (usually) writing your recipes in and the other one is the unit system you'd want to convert to. For each unit system you can set the name you want to display to your visitors and the different units that system is supposed to use.

The units you define here are the ones that will be used after converting. So if you don't want the metric unit system to use "milligrams", you could remove that unit as an option.

For each unit system you can also pick the exact cup and spoon types that system uses. There's quite a difference between a Japanese and Metric cup, for example, so even if both systems use "cups", the quantity might have to change.

Take note that just enabling these settings will not do anything yet. The second unit system will have to get calculated per recipe, as shown under "Using the Unit Conversion Feature" further down.

Defining unit aliases

A bit further down the settings you can also define aliases for the common units, to make sure the plugin recognizes your way of writing them:

Under "Aliases" you should add any way of writing that unit that you might be using in your recipes. The "Singular" and "Plural" column then decide how the unit will look after the conversion.

Using the Unit Conversion Feature

After enabling the settings you can use the Unit Conversion tab in the modal when creating or editing a recipe to actually calculated the second unit system for that recipe.

Here you can optionally change the "Original Unit System" for this particular recipe. That can be needed if you usually write your recipes in "US Customary" but used "Metric" for this recipe instead.

Use the blue button to convert all of the ingredients automatically or use the dropdown to convert to a specific unit:

We integrate with an external API so the plugin knows that 1 cup of water is not the same quantity as 1 cup of rice in metric units. After calculation you still have full control over the values shown, so feel free to adjust to your liking.

Set up Unit Conversion for all recipes at once

It's not possible to set up unit conversion for all recipes at once. The problem is that an automated solution is never perfect. By manually going through the steps you can double check the unit it converts to, adjust that unit when needed or fix/round any quantities as required.

We prefer not showing a second unit system to showing incorrect or confusing values.