Articles in Themes Category — Blog — Smart Slider 3 — WordPress Plugin

Why Should You Avoid Using a Nulled Plugin or Theme?

Ramona Nemeth-Csoka — Wed, 26 Jan 2022 07:00:01 +0000

It’s natural that people don’t want to spend more money than necessary. Because of that, they often try to find cost-cutting solutions. This is especially true when it comes to building a website. In fact, lots of new website owners find using a nulled plugin or nulled theme tempting.

Nulled plugins and themes give the impression of getting a premium product for free. However, they do have a cost, and many people don’t realize that until it’s too late.

What’s a nulled theme or nulled plugin?

Nulled plugins and themes are pirated versions of premium WordPress plugins and themes. In other words, nulled themes and plugins are not offered by the original author. Instead, they are offered by some 3rd party website that has no connection to the original author. In fact, usually developers are not even aware of the site that offers their plugin or theme.

Why would someone use a nulled plugin or nulled theme?

Usually the reason behind using a nulled software is to save money. Premium WordPress plugins and themes often seem to cost a bit too much. As a result, site owners move on and start looking for alternatives. This can lead them to nulled websites, where they can download the plugin or theme without paying.

So, nulled plugins and themes seem like a great deal. It makes people think they get a premium WordPress plugin or theme for no cost at all. They think that because there’s no upfront payment to be able to download the installer. Obtaining a paid product without spending money seems like a good deal. However, there’s a cost of using nulled plugins, even if you don’t pay that immediately.

7 reasons why you should avoid nulled plugins and themes

Nulled plugins and nulled themes give the impression of getting a paid plugin or theme for free. However, they do come with a cost, even if you won’t pay that cost immediately. Nulled plugins and themes can cause serious harm in your website.

So, you’ll pay for using any nulled product when you waste time trying to figure out what’s wrong with your site. Additionally, you can pay real money to fix the damage they’ve done to your site.

1. They cause security problems

The first issue with nulled themes and plugins is the security concern. You can’t be sure you get the exact same installer that paid users do, since you didn’t get it from the author. The 3rd party can do anything with the installer before you downloaded it. To make it more simple, you have no chance of knowing whether the installer is safe to use.

In fact, nulled plugins and themes are always modified by the 3rd party that distributes them. For example, the distributor usually modifies the plugin or theme work without license.

You might not mind having to enter the license, which you won’t have anyway. However, nulled distributors don’t stop there. In fact, many nulled plugins contain malicious code. For example, they might create a backdoor on your site, to give access to your site to the distributor. In other words, your website can get hacked because of using a nulled plugin. Cleaning up a hacked site can cost thousands of dollars.

2. They can steal private information

Apart from getting access to your website, nulled plugins can steal your site’s data. They can contain codes that “phone home” and steal the data of your users. So, the private information of anyone who registered to your site ends up at the distributor. For example, they can get their hands on email names, addresses, passwords and other data.

This is especially concerning because of certain data protection laws, such as GDPR. If your users’ data is leaked because of your site, you can face a serious lawsuit.

3. They can destroy your SEO

Having a good SEO is crucial to any website. However, Nulled plugins can destroy that by inserting malicious links to your website. Or they can redirect to spammy websites. This can highly increase your bounce rate, not to mention that Google sees these links. So, they can ruin your ranking, or in a worst case scenario, make Google blacklist your site.

In fact, in most cases you will not even notice the problem until it’s too late. Malicious codes like these usually won’t appear for administrators. So you will only notice you’re missing traffic, without knowing why.

4. There are no updates

Premium WordPress themes and plugins need a license key to update. This license key is only available for those who buy the products directly from the author. In other words, by using a nulled plugin or nulled theme, you will not have a license key. Without the key, you will not be able to update.

Why are updates so important? They can contain important fixes. For example, security patches. Or maybe compatibility codes with new WordPress and PHP versions. Using the latest WordPress, plugin and theme version can help reduce security risks. So you should always use the latest version of your theme, plugins and WordPress.

If you can’t update your theme, or a plugin, updating WordPress or PHP can cause site-breaking changes. If you can’t update a plugin you’re either forced to remove it, or to stop updating your site.

5. You’re on your own

Another aspect of premium themes and plugins is that they need a license to get support. The developers invest lots of time to develop, document and support their product. For this reason, they can only offer their help to those who purchased it from them.

If you use a nulled plugin or theme, you can’t ask the author for support. In fact, some plugins and themes make the documentation available only for their customers. So, if you don’t buy the product, you can’t even browse the documentation. You’ll need to learn the plugin or theme all by yourself, with no one to turn to.

6. They discourage innovation

Creating a fantastic plugin or beautiful theme takes lots of skill and effort. Additionally, developers always need to learn the latest technologies to improve their product. For these reasons, they deserve an income for their efforts.

By using nulled plugins and nulled themes, the developers don’t get income. If they don’t earn money from their plugin, they’ll likely abandon it. As a result, plugins and themes can disappear. This can destroy the whole WordPress ecosystem in the long run.

7. They can cause legal problems

I know what you’re thinking: why are legal problems so low in this list? Aren’t nulled plugins and themes illegal? Shouldn’t you have started with the legal issues?

In fact, usually it’s not illegal to use nulled plugins. WordPress is under the General Public License (GPL). In fact, usually the WordPress plugins and themes are under GPL as well. This means after getting the installer, people are free to run, study, change, and distribute it.

However, many themes and plugins are not fully licensed under GPL. They contain some files which are under a different license. If you don’t buy the plugin or theme from the author, you’re not authorized to have these files on your server.

Additionally, there are some hosts where it’s a breach of terms and services to use any pirated software. If the nulled plugin/theme is not fully licensed under GPL, hosting it can cause legal troubles for the host as well. Additionally, the malicious codes they contain are dangerous to the server, too.

What are the alternatives of a nulled plugin?

Nulled themes and plugins have only one thing that seems like an advantage. They don’t need upfront payment to run. It’s okay if you don’t want to spend money on a premium plugin or theme. But avoid nulled plugins and look for free plugins instead.

One of the best places to find free themes and plugins from trusted sources is WordPress.org. It has a huge list of free themes and possibly an even greater list of plugins. These plugins come directly from the author, so they won’t contain malicious code. The plugin authors have no intent on doing shady tricks like that.

Conclusion

Nulled plugins and themes seem appealing, because they appear to give access to paid products for free. Although you don’t need to pay to download them, they do come with a high cost. In fact, they’ll cost you money and time in the long run, because they often contain malicious codes. Cleaning up a hacked site is hundred times more expensive than a premium theme or plugin.

Ultimately, nulled plugins and nulled themes are dangerous, and you should not install them on your site. If you’re looking for a theme or plugin you can’t use without paying, check WordPress.org. You’ll find plenty of great products there for free.

The post Why Should You Avoid Using a Nulled Plugin or Theme? appeared first on Smart Slider 3 — WordPress Plugin.

Is Hello Theme the Best Theme for Elementor?

Ramona Nemeth-Csoka — Wed, 08 Apr 2020 11:00:37 +0000

Elementor is the most popular page builder for WordPress. It powers more than 5 million WordPress websites all around the world. Due to the nature of WordPress, even the best page builders need a theme as their canvas. For this reason, there are thousands of WordPress themes available to choose from. Now there’s a new challenger in town who wants to be the best theme for Elementor.

Meet Hello Theme, Elementor’s first theme. Since they know Elementor better than anyone else, they could create a theme that lets the user make the most of it. As a result, they created a theme that lets you build beautiful websites using Elementor. Additionally, the theme you use won’t get into your design’s way anymore. In fact, they claim this is the best theme for Elementor. Is that true? Let’s find out!

What is Hello Elementor theme?

Download Hello Elementor ThemeHello Elementor is a minimal and lightweight WordPress theme. Its main purpose is to be fast and work with Elementor as good as possible. When you work with Elementor on Hello theme, you can focus on designing the pages. In fact, you don’t have to worry about the theme getting in the way of your gorgeous design ideas. Since it doesn’t have many features, it doesn’t have much code, which makes it fast. As a result, Hello Elementor might just be the best theme for Elementor.

What are the best themes for Elementor?

Elementor works with any WordPress theme you can find. Despite this, there are three best themes for Elementor which developers love to use the most. The themes people particularly love are: Astra, OceanWP, and GeneratePress. Not only they’re free themes, but they also power over 800.000 WordPress sites. Hello Elementor is here to challenge these super popular themes. It has a single goal, to be the best theme for Elementor while being the fastest one as well.

What do you need to know about Hello Elementor theme?

Hello Elementor is a clean and simple WordPress theme. As a result, it doesn’t offer many styling options. But that’s not a problem, because you can use Elementor to design every aspect of your website. As a matter of fact, without Elementor, you can only style your pages with custom CSS. For instance, there’s only one menu, but it has no styling. With Elementor Pro you can easily overcome this problem, though.

Although WordPress traditionally has sidebars, Hello Elementor doesn’t have any. If your layout relies on sidebars, Hello Elementor might not be the best theme for Elementor for you. However, you can install a plugin that lets you create sidebars if that’s what you need. Using Elementor’s Sidebar Widget, you can place these sidebars on any page.

While it works fine with the free version, at the end of the day, Hello Elementor feels like a theme for Elementor Pro. For instance, you can’t style the header menu at all without the Pro, unless you do custom coding. However, many people who use Elementor don’t want or don’t know how to do that. There’s nothing wrong with creating a theme for Elementor Pro, of course. But it might have been better to call Hello Elementor what it actually is: a theme for Elementor Pro.

How easy is it to switch to Hello Elementor from a different theme?

Hello Elementor is a lightweight theme, designed to be the best theme for Elementor. Because of this, it makes many people think about abandoning their current theme for its sake. You can switch to Hello Elementor the same way as you’d switch to any other theme. In other words, you need to check the new theme in a testing environment first.

It’s important to realize that Hello Elementor is only a blank canvas you can work with. It’s different from the other popular Elementor themes. Due to the fact that these themes offer more features without the need of Elementor. So you need to be ready to make some heavy changes to keep the look and feel of your site after the theme changes. As a result, you’ll get a simpler and much faster loading website.

Is Hello Elementor a worthy challenger for “the best theme for Elementor” title?

Hello Elementor’s main purpose is to give a blank canvas for Elementor page builder. As I’ve mentioned before, the same team is behind the Elementor and Hello Elementor. Hence you can expect the theme to remain compatible with Elementor for years to come. With this in mind it worth giving Hello Elementor a chance for your next project. As a result, you can reduce the possibility of a conflict between your theme and page builder. If that’s not a good reason to say Hello Elementor is the best theme for Elementor, I’m not sure what is.

Elementor is the most popular page builder plugin. Because of that, there are many other plugins extending it with extra functionality. For instance, there’s a plugin that adds post grid to Elementor. The theme is not only compatible with Elementor, but it also works with these plugins. So if you plan to use any of these plugins, feel confident that the theme won’t cause you trouble.

Is Hello theme the fastest Elementor theme?

You can’t tell how fast a theme is without actually testing it. To find out how fast Hello Elementor is, I’ve imported five Elementor demo templates. Then I loaded each page using Hello Elementor, OceanWP, Astra and GeneratePress. To make the text more interesting, I also added Twenty Nineteen to the mix.

I ran the tests on the same website, with no other plugins but Elementor Free. The only exception is OceanWP, where I also installed and activated Ocean Extra. The server I ran the tests on runs PHP 7.2.16. There wasn’t any caching either on server side or via a plugin. The internet speed was 10Mbit/s for each test. These are the results for each template.

Homepage – Restaurant

Elementor’s Homepage Restaurant demo was my first choice for the speed comparison. To begin with, it has lots of images and a couple of fancy effects, which makes it perfect for measuring speed. As you can see from the table below, Hello Elementor managed to outperform the four other themes. The second fastest was Twenty Nineteen, which might be a little bit surprising. GeneratePress finished in third place with four extra requests compared to Hello Elementor.

	Hello Theme	OceanWP	Astra	GeneratePress	Twenty Nineteen
Requests	87	98	87	91	89
Page size	2.1MB	2.3MB	2.1MB	2.1MB	2.1MB
Load time	3.45s	3.85s	3.69s	3.64s	3.58s

Homepage – Fitness

Homepage Fitness is a bit more lightweight template than the Restaurant one. Because of this, it’s perfect for a fast loading landing page. It’s not surprising that Hello Elementor was the fastest to load this page as well. GeneratePress and Astra earned the second and third place respectively.

	Hello Theme	OceanWP	Astra	GeneratePress	Twenty Nineteen
Requests	42	51	43	45	44
Page size	960KB	1MB	972KB	976KB	985KB
Load time	2.37s	2.70s	2.41s	2.39s	2.43s

Landing Page – Vacation

Header background videos are popular design choices on many websites. For this reason, it makes sense to test a template which is a similar design choice. Landing Page Vacation is a cool template which has a background video in its hero header. This time, Twenty Nineteen loaded the template the fastest. Hello Elementor was the second fastest, closely followed by Astra.

	Hello Theme	OceanWP	Astra	GeneratePress	Twenty Nineteen
Requests	61	71	70	64	67
Page size	3.9MB	4MB	4.5MB	4MB	3.7MB
Load time	2.53s	2.88s	2.56s	2.88s	1.83s

Homepage – Agency

After testing a template with a video hero, I wanted to check a less content heavy template again. I’ve chosen Homepage Agency because of its modern look and few, but reasonable number of images. The results are quite similar to what we have got before. Hello Elementor is the first, Astra is the second and GeneratePress is the third.

	Hello Theme	OceanWP	Astra	GeneratePress	Twenty Nineteen
Requests	54	62	55	57	56
Page size	734KB	829KB	746KB	740KB	759KB
Load time	1.99s	2.26s	2.01s	2.08s	2.11s

Product – App

Product App template has very few images. As a result, it helps to get a better look at the actual speed of the theme. The speed test results aren’t so surprising. Hello Elementor is the fastest theme. The close second is Twenty Nineteen which managed to be faster than Astra by 0.02s.

	Hello Theme	OceanWP	Astra	GeneratePress	Twenty Nineteen
Requests	47	55	47	49	48
Page size	1.1MB	1.2MB	1.1MB	1.1MB	1.1MB
Load time	2.31s	2.51s	2.36s	2.46s	2.34s

Speed result conclusion

Based on my tests, Hello Elementor is indeed the fastest theme for Elementor. Twenty Nineteen, another rather basic theme was the only one that could beat it. In the light of the results, it’s safe to say Hello Elementor is a great choice for any website. As a matter of fact, it might just be the best theme for Elementor.

Where could Hello Elementor improve to be the best theme for Elementor?

Hello Elementor is a minimal theme, which lets you design your whole site using Elementor. As a result, there are some significant disadvantages, which future updates might solve. Here’s a list of features I’m missing from Hello Elementor the most:

Global styling options. See, when you download a standalone theme, it has some basic styling. For instance, it sets font sizes, colors, line height and so for texts and headings. Hello Elementor lacks these features. Of course, you can always fix this via custom coding, but it would be nice not to have to do that.
Removing the page title. Not all pages need to have a visible title. This is especially true when you can’t even style them without custom coding. Because of that, an option would be nice to remove the title from the specific page. Currently, you can only hide it, but that happens with CSS. Additionally, the h1 tag stays there, which can make it difficult for you to do proper SEO. However, if you switch to canvas page template, you can get rid of the page title. But you’ll need to say goodbye to your header and footer, because it doesn’t support them.
Better usage of Customizer. All themes must be Customizer ready to be a part of WordPress.org’s theme collection. Because of that Hello Elementor uses Customizer, too. With this in mind, it would be great to have a couple of options here, such as some global styling, mentioned above.

In any case, Hello Elementor is a great theme, perhaps the best theme for Elementor. But it would be great to see either of these features in a future release. In the meantime, Hello Elementor remains your average, but speedy minimal WordPress theme.

How can you use Smart Slider 3 with Elementor and Hello Elementor?

Smart Slider 3 is the best rated WordPress slider plugin. Moreover, it’s fully compatible with Elementor. As a result, you can add the sliders you created to Elementor using a special Smart Slider 3 widget. Since Hello Elementor relies on the page builder, Smart Slider 3 works with it as well. In case you haven’t used Smart Slider 3 yet, here’s a quick video that shows you how easy it is to display your slider.

Smart Slider 3 is a great choice to create beautiful sliders, especially, if you don’t have Elementor Pro. Even if you do have it, Smart Slider 3 has much more features compared to Elementor’s own solution. For instance, you can create gorgeous dynamic post sliders, even with the Free version.

Get Elementor Pro

Conclusion

Choosing a WordPress theme isn’t easy as there are so many themes to choose from. The final choice always depends on the project’s requirements and personal preferences. With this in mind, Hello Elementor is a great starter theme. It indeed suits well for most Elementor websites. In case it doesn’t suit yours, you can choose from the three most popular Elementor themes from above. They’re great, just like Hello Elementor, although maybe not as fast.

The post Is Hello Theme the Best Theme for Elementor? appeared first on Smart Slider 3 — WordPress Plugin.

How to Create a Stunning Avada Slider for WordPress

Raelene Morey — Fri, 03 Apr 2020 07:39:25 +0000

Are you thinking about creating an Avada slider for your WordPress site? Avada is the most popular premium theme for WordPress, providing powerful multipurpose options and tools for creating any kind of website.

Avada comes with a purpose-built slider tool, Fusion Slider, which gives you the flexibility to add animated and responsive WordPress sliders to your site. The theme also comes bundled with three more slider plugins — Slider Revolution, LayerSlider, and Elastic Slider — giving you even more options for building stunning Avada sliders for your site.

But as we’ll explore in this post, when you use these bundled plugins, you won’t be able to access slide libraries, templates, updates, support and other features you thought you paid for when you bought Avada.

So let’s take a look at why the slider plugins that come with Avada don’t provide the full slider functionality you’re probably expecting. We’ll also take a look at the free version of Smart Slider 3, which is a better alternative for creating stunning Avada sliders for WordPress.

The Problem with Bundled Avada Slider Plugins

When you purchase the Avada theme, it comes with four different slider options, which is impressive! Not only does it come with Fusion Slider, which has been developed especially for Avada, but there are three more slider plugins included. Lots of choices, right?

The problem is, the slider plugins that are bundled with Avada lack important features and functionality you need when building a slider for your website, including:

You can’t import premium slider libraries or templates,
Updates aren’t available, and
There’s no premium support.

ThemeForest themes such as Avada offer slider functionality via an extended license that the theme author buys from the plugin developer. This means that:

The slider plugins bundled with Avada can only be used with Avada. This means you can’t use these plugins if you switch themes;
If you need help, you can’t access support directly from the slider plugin developer. You can only ask Theme Fusion for support (and they might not be able to help you anyway); and
Bundled slider plugins can only be updated when new versions of Avada are released, i.e. you have to wait for updates, which leaves your site vulnerable to security threats.

It’s important to know that the four slider plugins that come bundled with Avada are not your only Avada slider options — you can use other slider plugins, too!

In fact, it’s actually a good idea to use a standalone slider plugin, not a bundled one. These slider plugins give you access to more features, updates, and support without any licensing restrictions.

Why Smart Slider 3 is the Best Slider Plugin for Avada Theme?

A better, lightweight and feature-packed solution for Avada sliders is Smart Slider 3 — and, it’s free!

So what makes Smart Slider 3 a great solution for creating an Avada slider? It offers just the right number of features so you can create a beautiful slider with a complex design, all without having to upgrade or purchase a license.

Smart Slider 3 comes with content and canvas editing modes, which allow you to visually build your sliders using drag and drop headings, text, images, buttons and YouTube or Vimeo videos. You can also create layers and control everything from your typography and navigational arrows to your animations and slider autoplay.

If you like working from templates, there are eight free templates to choose from, which you can import and edit to suit your website. Here is an example of one of Smart Slider 3’s free slider templates:

The best part is, Smart Slider 3 is really easy to use and the free version comes packed with features that rival most premium slider plugins. There’s a pro version of Smart Slider 3 available, which I’ve compared with Slider Revolution here. But really, the free version is all you need to get started adding a beautiful Avada slider to your website.

How to add Smart Slider 3 to Avada Theme

After you finished working on your new, beautiful sliders, it’s time to make them show up on your site. After all, that’s the reason you made them: to enhance your site with beautiful pictures and effects. Since Avada is a WordPress theme that doesn’t integrate Smart Slider 3, it’s a little bit tricky to make your sliders show up. But worry not, there’s a couple of easy way to add Smart Slider 3 to your website!

Publishing Smart Slider 3 using Fusion Builder

The easiest way to add an Avada Slider to your site using Smart Slider 3 is via Fusion builder. Create a Column, add a new element and search for “Smart Slider 3”. Add this element, then select the slider you want to show.

Using a child theme to add Smart Slider 3

Another great way to add Smart Slider 3 to your Avada theme is using Avada’s child theme. Child Themes allow modifying the theme without an update erasing them. We put together an excellent tutorial which has detailed instructions on how to publish the slider using the child theme.

Beautiful Avada Slider Examples

Do you need inspiration to integrate beautiful sliders to you Avada theme? Check out the following examples with Smart Slider 3!

1. Static Full Page Slider

Avada’s Cryptocurrency demo looks gorgeous with a full page slider. I chose the Static Slider demo, because its shape divider fit so well to the white section below.

2. Colorful Full Width Slider

SEO is an important part of every website. No wonder ThemeFusion created a beautiful website template targeting agencies who provide SEO services. The Fullwidth slider demo is a perfect fit for this template.

3. Full Page Hotel

A full Page slider gives a nice touch to any website. Avada’s Hotel demo is no different. You can easily add the slider to this demo by disabling the default slider first. Then add the slider you made with Smart Slider 3 using Fusion Builder.

Conclusion

When it comes to Avada sliders, you’re not just restricted to the slider plugins that come bundled with the theme — you can use whatever slider plugin you want!

So why not give Smart Slider 3 a try? The free version comes with more features and functionality than the bundled Avada slider options. Plus, it comes with regular updates and expert support.

The post How to Create a Stunning Avada Slider for WordPress appeared first on Smart Slider 3 — WordPress Plugin.

GeneratePress and Smart Slider 3: The Beginner’s Guide

Klara Kalko — Sun, 29 Mar 2020 07:00:29 +0000

There has been a lot of talk about whether to use a slider or not. So, should you? Despite the fact I rarely use sliders, here’s my answer: if you want to use a slider, use it. Just be aware, your website visitors aren’t going to click with excitement on every slide one-by-one. So don’t fall into the trap of publishing a slider on your homepage simply because your newly purchased multipurpose theme has several demo templates with it.

This is a guest post written by Klara Kalko, who is a freelance blogger at WP Metro. The opinions and ideas expressed herein are author’s own.

Better yet. Don’t use a slider with a multipurpose theme at all. Stick to a basic lightweight theme, such as GeneratePress, one of the best minimal and customizable free WordPress themes (read more about it below). It comes with detailed documentation and tutorial videos, so you will quickly figure out how to set up the theme. In the meantime, your visitors will appreciate the fast website and loading time.

WordPress sliders: consider or avoid?

Definitely an eye candy and an attention catcher, if used right, poorly designed slider along with average-quality content (remember, focus is designer’s best friend) will drive people away at the speed of light. Therefore, experiment, try different placement, show off only the best visual pieces you have. Last but not least, ask yourself what is the purpose of adding a slider and what exactly do you want to achieve with it.

Design is a form of a communication, so if you need a slider to communicate and interact with the visitor / user more effectively, go ahead. In other cases, you will end up using a slider for the sake of having one, which isn’t even an option.

Two things to keep in mind:

the fewer slides you have, the better
use only responsive WordPress slider plugins and always test your sliders on different devices. It saves your time and you won’t have to deal with disappointments.

Back in early 2017, my extremely critical point of view towards sliders came to an end when I discovered Smart Slider 3. It quickly became the only slider I really liked and made an exception for. Obviously, this is also the only standalone slider I recommend and use.

Best minimal and lightweight WordPress themes: GeneratePress

The advantages of using a lightweight WordPress theme (such as a long-time favorite of mine, GeneratePress) instead of a heavy multipurpose one are hard to beat. Serving as a rock solid foundation for any website, GeneratePress delivers impressively fast performance, is responsive and very easy to customize. All theme options are integrated with the native WordPress customizer. It speeds up the theme’s setup and keeps it as simple as possible.

In fact, that was the very first reason I liked GeneratePress so much. The second reason is a modular structure: you can enable or disable theme features depending on your requirements.

In my opinion, every WordPress theme should be built that way.

Again, personal experience: I switched both of my websites to GeneratePress after almost one year of using one of the best multipurpose themes. Never looked back.

GeneratePress Premium Modules Overview

GeneratePress is a 100% free theme, but chances are, within 1 hour of using it you will want a premium modules bundle. GP Premium allows you to customize every part of the theme without adding custom CSS: colors, fonts, menu appearance, blog layout, backgrounds, copyright text and many others. You also get full access to the website templates library, permission to activate your license on unlimited websites and can easily export / import your GP settings.

As a WordPress theme, GeneratePress is a great choice for every category of WordPress users – from beginners to experienced developers: the theme has extensive selections of built-in hooks and filters. There’s only one thing that is just as great as GeneratePress itself – excellent and very helpful customer support (thanks to Tom Usborne, Leo and David Beckwith).

The theme has been chosen. Now let’s take a closer look at Smart Slider 3 and how you can easily design great-looking sliders with it.

Smart Slider 3: first steps

Smart Slider 3 is a really powerful, robust solution that can help you to implement almost any animation-related idea / scenario. Still, every advanced user at some point was a beginner, so let’s start with the basics. Guess what was the first thing I noticed immediately after installing and activating the slider?

The user interface of Smart Slider 3 is just as clean, beautiful and stylish as the sliders you can create with it. Options / settings are intuitive and easy to figure out, every icon seems to have a perfect placement and Smart Slider 3 is simple enough to use, even if you are an absolute beginner.

First things first. Free version of Smart Slider 3 is available on the WordPress plugin repository.

Don’t underestimate the prefix “free”, though – even the free version is packed with many great and quality features.

That alone makes free version of Smart Slider 3 a serious competitor, capable to rival premium sliders. In fact, Smart Slider 3 successfully does just that.

Using Smart Slider 3 with GeneratePress: best features + ways to use

Unlike heavy multipurpose themes, GeneratePress is minimal, lightweight and isn’t bundled with sliders or any additional plugins. For each project, you can choose required plugins on your own. Almost always, people want to have additional visual elements or add more interactivity to make their landing page stand out. Like I said, GeneratePress doesn’t have a built-in slider feature, so here’s what Smart Slider 3 can do for you.

Actually, it’s pretty much my list of favorite features – there are much more.

First and foremost: full integration with WordPress and smooth, bug-free compatibility with GeneratePress. For those who prefer working with page builders, Smart Slider 3 supports Elementor, Beaver Builder, Divi, SiteOrigin Page Builder and Visual Composer. Free version of Smart Slider 3 allows you to use your blog posts as a dynamic source for the slides.

If you are a designer, illustrator, photographer or filmmaker, Pro version offers something special for you – additional dynamic slide sources: Dribbble, Flickr, YouTube or more generic social networks, such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest. With Smart Slider 3, you can connect your favorite social network to your website and design the landing page your way – the possibilities are very diversed and flexible.

Even WooCommerce is on the list, so you can design a beautiful landing page for your e-store. Designers and advanced users of Smart Slider 3 can hone their skills by trying to replicate UI / UX design animation. Both versions of Smart Slider 3 allow you to fully customize slider elements: arrows, bullets, thumbnails, slider autoplay and so on. Also, there’s a convenient font management system and integrated Google fonts.

Smart Slider 3 Template Library

Makes me stare. Seriously. Excellent showcase of what you can do with Smart Slider 3 and if you have Smart Slider 3 Pro, you can freely download / customize any of these beautiful templates. 100+ pre-designed slides, 11 of them are free. Filtered by categories, high-quality demo templates with a flawless and clean design will speed up your work.

Guess by now I made it a bit more understandable why Smart Slider 3 Pro is my #1 choice when it comes to sliders. Let’s get more visual.

After installing and activating Smart Slider 3 (same process as with any other WordPress plugin), a new panel will appear in your WordPress dashboard.

Smart Slider 3 in WordPress menu

This is where all the magic happens. When you click on Smart Slider in your WordPress menu, you will be redirected to the dashboard.

Smart Slider 3 settings

There are three menu items:

Dashboard (which is pretty much a homepage of Smart Slider settings / options)
Settings
Help (direct access to detailed Smart Slider 3 documentation, customer support and video tutorials)

Smart Slider 3 Dashboard

General settings and framework settings
I suggest you explore them step-by-step. For now, let’s keep the default ones.

Fonts
This tab allows you to select and configure fonts for your slider. Additional options: enable or disable Google fonts, select font style and character set.

Item defaults
The most extensive and well thought-out tab of Smart Slider 3 settings. Select and set up different elements of your slider.

Generator tabs
Currently, there are 6 social networks you can connect to your WordPress website to create dynamic sliders based on your posted content. Dribbble, Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, Vimeo, YouTube. One of the coolest features of Smart Slider 3, it’s also very flexible and useful.

Let’s return to Smart Slider 3 dashboard welcome screen. You have probably noticed the Info center at the top-right corner. Using it, you can check for Smart Slider 3 updates and activate / deactivate your license.

Creating a slider with Smart Slider 3 Pro

Smart Slider 3 dashboard presents three options. You can design a new slider from the scratch, explore templates library to import a demo or check a sample slider.

New slider
After clicking on “Create a New Project” box, new window opens. Here you can choose a name for your slider, set up slider’s width and height per your requirements and select slider’s format.

After selecting a preset, click Create. Now you need to choose content / images for your slider. It’s either your own images, Smart Slider 3 library, a video, your WordPress blog posts or other dynamic sources (Dribble, Facebook, Flickr, Pinterest, RSS, Vimeo, YouTube).

Additional options, if you have any of these plugins installed and activated:

All-in-One Event Calendar
Gallery by BestWebSoft
Events Manager
Nextgen Gallery
The Events Calendar
WooCommerce

As the most common source, let’s start with images. Each slide has its own configuration options that appear when you edit slides separately (click on green square plus icon on the left side to access them). There are also a few features for a more convenient, faster and better workflow:

Quick access to general slider settings
Quick access to slides
1-click preview of your slider
Live slider controls and adjustments for mobile devices

It’s quite easy to get carried away with all design possibilities and advanced options of Smart Slider 3. Don’t forget to save your work from time to time.

Single slide settings
To simplify and streamline your work on each slide, Smart Slider 3 equips you with 5 groups of editing tools.

Layer tab
basic tools, content tools, media tools, advanced tools

Structure tab
basic and special layouts

General slider settings

Conclusion

Yoast once published an article named “Sliders suck and should be banned from your website”. Yes, they are respected and famous SEO experts, but I highly doubt this statement. What is 100% true, is that little fact that

“any animation not triggered by the user, can be at best distracting, at worst annoying” (Jules)

Take it as the main rule when you design a slider. Aside from that, sliders don’t suck. Smart Slider 3 proves it.

The post GeneratePress and Smart Slider 3: The Beginner’s Guide appeared first on Smart Slider 3 — WordPress Plugin.

Build Your Website Easily with Astra Theme and Smart Slider 3

Bernadett Toth — Sat, 28 Mar 2020 09:23:07 +0000

In our busy world we can’t spend lots of time building websites, sometimes we have just a few days. But if you aren’t a developer, can you build a website? Can you make it in such a short time? Can you simply customize and make it responsive? Yes, it is possible! With the Astra Theme and with a slider you can build a good-looking site just in a few hours. And with a slider you can cheer up your site. Smart Slider 3 is a great possibility to realize this in your Astra Theme.

In this article I will show you how you can build your website with Astra Theme and Smart Slider 3.

About Astra

Astra is a very simple and customizable theme in which you can customize your own content. This theme has simple editing options. The Theme is available for free at WordPress.org and it has wide-ranging popularity. It has 1+ million active installs and 5/5 stars rating.

So you can trust it!

Astra Theme for WordPress

Astra is made for page builders, therefore you can customize it without a coding knowledge. You can change the design in the WordPress Customizer. Besides that it offers you ready to import websites. You should just install the Starter Templates plugin to get the beautiful layouts.

Using the Astra Theme is very extensive. You can use it for your blog or you can make an eCommerce, a small agency or a business website. You can change everything in the Theme, and can reach the result what you imagined.

It is important mention that Astra is made for speed. And this isn’t just a “marketing trick”, this is a real fact what the Theme promises. But I will write about that later.

Has the Astra Theme slider tool? Unfortunately not, and I miss it. Slider makes your site more expressive, but you can use the Smart Slider 3 plugin, and you can easily put it into your theme. So if you want to build a website using free tools, Smart Slider 3 with Astra Theme provides you a great option.

How about page builders?

Page builders are very populated in WordPress. You should just imagine what you want, and with simple drag and drop your website is ready. But a page builder can’t work well without a good theme. A theme should be optimized to be highly compatible for page builders.

Astra offers different solutions with which you can be sure that your website will look exactly how you imagined it. It gives you more space to focus on design. At the post and pages you can disable the header, title or the footer. You can switch a layout inside a post/page, and you can choose a sidebar option as well.

Astra Settings

So Astra lets you customize every setting on every page, so you can simply personalize your website. You can focus on the content. There aren’t places what you can’t change with a page builder, if there is something, you can easily switch that off.

How about sliders?

Nowadays I can’t imagine a website without a hero image, and a slider is an extended version of that. In a slider there are multiple versions of your hero images which you can make your site even more professional with.

Sample Slider in Smart Slider 3

Sliders are particularly good design tools which allow images, videos and other content like CTA buttons. The content can be expressive and maximizes the space on your website as well.

When a person visits your website, it makes a good impression on them if your site:

is easy to read,
simple,
clear,
and good-designed.

And sliders can add these conditions for your website.

Tutorial: Astra Theme with Smart Slider 3 – Website in 1 Hour

Import a template from Starter Templates

In Astra there are a lot of free and premium ready to import websites. You should download just the Starter Templates plugin and you can choose which page builder you are using: Elementor, Beaver Builder, Gutenberg or Brizy.

Select your page builder in Starter Templates

Using these templates is a good choice, they look gorgeous, modern and can be imported easily. Some of the templates are only available in paid version, but there are a lot for free ones.
You can preview them and by 2 clicking you can import what you want.

First you should install the plugins which are in your chosen template. Finally you can import the site.

Import a template

Import a slider from the Template Library

You have a ready template now and you need just a slider to the top. You can use slider easily in Astra Theme, and if you want to be ready fast, Smart Slider 3 has a Template Library as well. And you can import a slider from there.

Import a template in Smart Slider

In the Slider Library there are a lot of premium and free sliders, now I will import a free one.

Free slider templates

After that you can customize your slider and you can put it into your Astra Theme. Adding to Astra Theme slider is very simple with your favorite page builder. You should just use the Smart Slider 3 widget, and you have a slider in your site now!

If you would like to learn about how you can publish Smart Slider 3, watch our video:

It took about 5 minutes to have a ready template on your site considering that you have looked around on the Astra Site and knew which Astra template you would use. Importing a slider and putting it in your template is not more than 5 minutes. So you have 50 Minutes yet if you would like to finish your page in one hour.

Now you should just personalize your content. Very fast, very simple and you can enjoy building a website.

Creating in Astra Theme slider for the heading part

With Astra Theme you can even make a custom header with Smart Slider 3. This is also simple, you can choose a widget type for header in the Customizing → Header → Primary menu.

Customizing menu in Astra Theme

Then in your Customizing menu → Widgets you can set the Smart Slider 3 widget.

Smart Slider 3 widget

You should just choose which slider would you like to display. And now you have a header on all of your pages with your slider.

But there are more options to apply your Astra Theme slider, first of all you can download the Astra Hooks plugin. With this plugin you can paste a shortcode fast everywhere on your page.

Astra Hooks

You should just copy and paste your sliders’ shortcode into a place where you want to display it.

Customize hooks

So I can tell you there are a lot of options to make your own website.

I wrote about only the free version of Astra Theme and Smart Slider 3. With the paid version of them I can’t imagine limits by building a site.

How about speed?

The speed of your webpage is the most important thing what you have to consider. People don’t have lots of time to wait loading your site, so it should be fast. It depends on a lot of factors, but choosing a good Theme and a fast hosting can be the solution.

Astra loads only about 0.5 second. That is usually short, because most homepages load about 1MB. It is optimized for speed, and needs only 50 KB of resources to load. It doesn’t use jQuery, instead of that it uses Vanilla. And Astra Theme gets high ratings in all page speed test tools.

About Astra speed

Smart Slider 3 only loads after everything else has finished loading on your website to be able to calculate the positions where everything should be. Normally it doesn’t take lots of time, but if you uploaded a high quality picture it can be slower. So most of the speed depends on the used rich media. But in Smart Slider 3 you have the opportunity to optimize your slider.

Smart Slider 3 offers a lot of speed settings for you in the Pro version.

What can you do to optimize your slider?

Choose the correct image size: Use images where the dimensions are close to your slider size!
Use device specific images: You can use device specific images what can be easily set, also you can optimize your images even better.
Reduce the number of slides: Don’t use too many slides on your page! Furthermore you can display your images randomly. This is also an option in Smart Slider 3.
Use the Smart Slider 3 image resizing feature: The Optimize tab → Layer image resize and Background image resize options can be really useful. They will resize the images to the sliders size automatically.
Use the lazy loading: With this feature you can set up that a certain number of images load.

Smart Slider 3 Optimize tab

So Smart Slider 3 in Astra Theme takes care of your problems with the speed.

Final Thoughts

I can recommend Astra Theme to everybody who starts building a website now and doesn’t know which Theme to choose. It loads fast, it is clean and you can fully customize it. And it works fine with Smart Slider 3, hence you can take your site more professional.

Astra is a great decision if you like to use page builders, and Smart Slider 3 is the best choice to use a slider in your Astra Theme. With this Theme and with this plugin you can save a lot of time.

The post Build Your Website Easily with Astra Theme and Smart Slider 3 appeared first on Smart Slider 3 — WordPress Plugin.

How to Add a Slider in OceanWP Theme

Bernadett Toth — Fri, 27 Mar 2020 07:00:11 +0000

A good theme is the basis of your site. If you would like to make a good impression on your visitors, you should choose a great theme. If you like using page builders, your decision will often come to OceanWP. OceanWP is a free WordPress theme that has a lot of premium features. It has more than 600,000 active installs and a five-star rating with many great reviews. Also, a slider is almost a default feature on websites. To use OceanWP slider, Smart Slider 3 can be a good choice for creating powerful, clean and beautiful site.

Why is OceanWP a good choice?

OceanWP is fully responsive and e-commerce ready, furthermore it integrates very well with WooCommerce. It’s designed to work with the best page builders, therefore works well with Elementor, Visual Composer, Divi, and Beaver Builder too.

Imported Demo from OceanWP Demo Library

It is always great when the theme customization options are integrated into the default WordPress editor. Here you can see a live preview of the changes you applied. In the customize menu you can set up different theme elements such as the header, footer, menu and sidebar. First of all, I can tell you that the OceanWP customize menu is very well collected, containing many settings. The WordPress customizer is where OceanWP really shines. With the extensions you get more and more options which you can customize your site.

Ocean Extra: recommended basis plugin

Ocean Extra is a recommended plugin for the settings. If you navigate to the Theme Panel, you have the option to enable/disable the customizer panels. You can upload your logo, favicon, similarly choose your primary color and typography. In the Theme Panel “My library” is available, where you can create your own template like custom header or footer.

OceanWP Settings view under the post

With this plugin you get a detailed meta box under the posts or pages with the name Ocean WP Settings. There are a lot of options by which you can customize a post or page. I think this is one of the best features in the OceanWP with lots of options. You can add shortcode to many places, hide sidebar, change menu color or set a new header.

OceanWP Extensions: from OceanWP slider to the sticky header

OceanWP can be extended with free and even more premium plugins. You can buy separate extensions, or likewise a core bundle of extensions all at once. OceanWP has premium extensions like the Sticky Header or Footer which is the basis of many sites. One of my favourite ones is Elementor Widgets, it makes building your website easier with Elementor page builder. Navigation Widget, Ajax Search, Logged In/Out widget can be useful on your site as well.

However, there are a lot of free plugins you can download to the theme. What I suggest is the OceanWP Extra, as I have written above. The theme offers lots of demos that you can use and customize on your site with the Demo Import extension. It is probably the easiest way to make a site quickly. OceanWP slider plugin is a Posts Slider, which means that you can make OceanWP slider with 1 or 3 posts or products.

OceanWP Posts Slider

The plugin generates a shortcode, what you can use. I think it’s a basic extension but it is simple and can be easily set up. If you would like to use on OceanWP slider with even more functions, I recommend you Smart Slider 3.

Smart Slider 3 as OceanWP slider

Smart Slider 3 can be certainly a great alternative to OceanWP slider plugin. It can be easy to use as the default OceanWP slider. It helps you create beautiful and complex sliders, and you can customize everything. The best part is that Smart Slider 3 is free, just like OceanWP. Also, it’s available in the WordPress Plugin Directory. The plugin is, first of all, fully responsive, clean and powerful, furthermore user friendly. Using Smart Slider 3 is easy to learn, which also helps a lot documentations and videos.

Smart Slider 3 can be a great free alternative to many premium sliders, but it is more than average image sliders. It has layers, beautiful effects and dynamic slide generators. You can autoplay between the slides and set up the time to change it. In this plugin you can also make a video slider with YouTube or Vimeo which makes your site morFe professional. Also, the plugin has more wonderful features in PRO version.

How to create responsive OceanWP slider free with Smart Slider 3

After installing Smart Slider 3, you can load an example from our demo page or begin to make a new slider. Smart Slider 3 has different layers which have their own settings and you can customize them. For example, you can change the font color and family of the heading and text layers or set background color. You can choose slide background image fill, and also you can add a background animation. After you have finished your slider, you can publish it.

Insert to the OceanWP slider with Smart Slider 3 is very easy with shortcode:

OceanWP slider inserting

OceanWP has more opportunity to insert a shortcode. You can just easily copy and paste the slider shortcode into a post or page. Also in OceanWP Settings you can customize the position: before/after the top bar, header, title or footer. Or customize it with Elementor.

How to make a custom header with Smart Slider 3?

In OceanWP you have the chance to make a custom header or footer. This is like a template, and Smart Slider 3 is a good opportunity to use it as a custom header. The easiest way of making a custom header, when you use a page builder like Elementor.

STEP 1: Navigate to the Theme Panel → My library, than Add New. If you use Elementor, choose Elementor Canvas template in Post Attributes, after that you can customize it.
STEP 2: When you are ready, go to the Customize menu → Header → General, and set your Custom Header. That’s all!

Reasons to use Smart Slider 3 in your OceanWP theme

Free: Smart Slider 3 is the most powerful free slider plugin in the plugin directory.
Responsive: You can customize the slider easily for any mobile devices.
User friendly: Drag & drop slide editor with intuitive tools.
Easy to insert: using shortcodes
Different layers: heading, text, button, image, YouTube, and Vimeo
Customizable: Every inch of the layers and the slides, such as color, font or size etc.
Design: It makes your site more professional

Dynamic Slider to your blog

Like the OceanWP slider plugin, the Smart Slider 3 also can create sliders from your posts. You should just once set it up, after that the slider will automatically refresh the content. That’s also easy to do, just choose to give dynamic slides to your slider and one of the WordPress generators. After that, a lot of settings appear, by which you can customize your dynamic slider.

I’ve made an example for you, where I’ve set 3 sliders. I used a free demo slider for the base. Than I gave the title and the date and the first 300 words of my posts as description. The dynamic post slider uses the post’s featured image as the slide background.

WooCommerce slider to your webshop

OceanWP is e-commerce ready, you can build easily an awesome webshops with WooCommerce. In the PRO version of Smart Slider 3 you can build your website to be more efficient and spectacular. You have the possibility of making a dynamic WooCommerce slider with a lot of settings.

With this dynamic slide generator, you can show the contents of your products. You can set up how your slides will look with the data of the first slide. You can put down layers, and use the variables to put those data inside them what you want there to be. In our documentation you can find more information about filters and variables.

Conclusion

I really liked this theme, I found a solution or setting for everything what I needed. OceanWP works very well with the page builders and it’s easy to use and learn. If you would like to build a professional website free, you should try OceanWP with Smart Slider 3.

The post How to Add a Slider in OceanWP Theme appeared first on Smart Slider 3 — WordPress Plugin.

How to Add WordPress Sliders to Twenty Nineteen

Raelene Morey — Wed, 19 Jun 2019 06:10:04 +0000

Twenty Nineteen is the new default theme for WordPress and has been designed to show off the power of the new block editor. What’s more, it’s super easy to customize if you’re looking to add sliders to your site!

Twenty Nineteen features custom styles for all the default blocks and works great with custom blocks provided by third party plugin developers. It’s also been built so what you see in the new editor looks like what you’ll see on the front-end of your site.

It’s a minimal starter theme that has an elegant aesthetic designed to be adaptable to a wide range of sites. Use it for your typography-driven blog or adapt it for your professional business website. It’s also suitable for magazine, portfolio and non-profit sites.

Twenty Nineteen WordPress theme preview

Twenty Nineteen was originally released with WordPress 5.0 and it is proving popular, with over 1 million active installations to date. I personally like the new theme design and have enjoyed tinkering with it in the new block editor (formerly the Gutenberg editor). It’s easy to customize with blocks, and it feels relatively light compared to other free WordPress themes.

Let’s take a look at Twenty Nineteen’s design features, and then we’ll show you how to easily add a slider to this fantastic free theme.

Twenty Nine Features At a Glance

With its pared-down, open aesthetic, Twenty Nineteen provides a great foundation for a wide variety of websites. Plus, with the WordPress Customizer, you can easily access theme options for your site.

Its features include:

Customizable With the New Editor

Twenty Nineteen is completely customizable with the new WordPress editor. You can choose any of the available blocks to create any kind of content for your site, from columns of text to full-width sliders. You can also use blocks provided by third-party plugins.

Unlike Twenty Seventeen, which has a fullscreen homepage design, Twenty Nineteen has a more contemporary full-width, single column design that looks great on all devices. There’s ample whitespace, giving the theme a professional look and feel. The sans serif headline paired with serif body text makes for a classic typographical combination.

Gutenberg block editor in Twenty Nineteen theme

Supports Site Logos

Twenty Nineteen supports site logos in the header. Whether you have a personal blog, portfolio, or business site, you can easily add a logo or photo to your site, which will appear in the top-left corner together with your navigation menu.

To add a logo, open the WordPress Customizer and go to “Site Identity.”

Changing your site logo is easy in Twenty Nineteen theme’s customizer

The new default theme also includes a social icons menu, which lets you add links to your social media provides in the header, too.

Supports Bold Features Images

With Twenty Nineteen, you can display featured images full-width or fullscreen (the images cover the full width and height of the screen).

Color overlays are a new feature in this default WordPress theme, which you can easily switch on and off. Twenty Nineteen uses a blue accent color by default, but you can change the primary color in the WordPress Customizer. This gives you loads of control over custom colors that make you look like a pro.

Accent color picker in Twenty Nineteen’s Customizer

Widgetized Footer

There’s a widget area in the footer, which includes all the widgets you would normally see in a sidebar, i.e. search, archives, categories, meta, recent comments.

On screens wider than 1169px, widgets are automatically displayed in a two column layout.

Why Use Smart Slider 3 for Your Twenty Nineteen Sliders?

Smart Slider 3 is a robust, feature-rich and user-friendly slider plugin for WordPress that comes with a custom block for the new WordPress editor. That means it’s easier than ever to add a slider to your WordPress website!

The free version of Smart Slider 3 offers just the right number of customization options to help you create a beautiful slider, all without feeling overwhelmed by features. Unlike other free slider plugins, it also lets you work with layers — an essential feature of any slider plugin, in my opinion.

Here are some of the things that I like about Smart Slider 3 over other plugins:

Content editor – Edit your slides like you would with a page builder.
Canvas editor – Drag and drop your layers anywhere on your slides.
Slide library – The Slide Library provides several pre-made slides to kickstart your work.
Page builder support – Elementor, Divi, Beaver Builder, Page Builder by SiteOrigin, Visual Composer, and the new WordPress block editor.
Responsive and touch-friendly – Your sliders will look great on all devices.
Dynamic slides – Automatically display your WordPress posts in slides.
Customizable controls – Arrows, bullets, autoplay, bar, thumbnails, shadows.
Slide backgrounds – 9 background animations.
Layers – Build unique designs with 6 layers: Image, heading, text, button, Vimeo, YouTube.
Font and style manager – Easily update typography, font sizes, and styles.
Sample sliders – With 11 sliders to start.

Smart Slider 3 makes it really easy to add sliders to Twenty Nineteen. Whether you want to add a slider to the header of your site, a fullscreen slider background, or a simple image slider, Smart Slider 3 makes it really to add new sliders to your WordPress site.

How to Add a Slider to the Twenty Nineteen Theme

Twenty Nineteen theme is the perfect theme for any modern blog. Your visitors can focus on the content of your post, without any distractions. But you don’t need to have fancy effects to make your website interesting and interactive. Instead of distracting your visitors, you can create a simple slider which strengthens your message.

What’s a Simple Slider?

A simple slider is a kind of slider, that’s not bloated with fancy effects. Generally, it has images and a few lines of text, which either describe the image or tell a different story. They can browse them in an easy and convenient way.

Smart Slider 3 Free is the perfect choice to create a simple slider to enrich your blog posts. As a matter of fact, you can customize every aspect of your slider. Not only you can create an unlimited number of sliders, but they’ll be truly unique. What’s more, all sliders you create are fully responsive. Gutenberg makes it super easy to add your slider to any page or post of your website.

How to Create a Simple Slider for your website?

It’s incredibly easy to create a simple slider with Smart Slider 3. First, add images, then put down some layers and style them. Finally, add arrows or bullets and the perfect simple slider is ready. To demonstrate how easy it is to create a simple slider, we recorded a video for you. It shows you how to create a beautiful simple slider and add it to a post using Gutenberg editor.

With Smart Slider 3 you’re not restricted to create static slides only. You can create beautiful dynamic post sliders as well. A dynamic post slider shows your latest blog posts automatically. In other words, you don’t have to update the slider after you add a new post. Moreover, a simple blog slider on your homepage can attract more people to your latest posts.

How to publish a slider to your Twenty Nineteen slider’s homepage?

Twenty Nineteen theme has one widget position only, at the footer of the page. This position is perfect to create copyright text or footer menu. On the negative side, the footer widget position makes it harder to create header sliders. But worry not, because you don’t have to give up on having a homepage slider. You can always edit your theme’s files and place your slider there.

Publishing a Smart Slider 3 slider to your theme’s file

In this tutorial below, we’re going to place a slider just below the main menu. We’re going to directly edit the theme’s files, so be sure to use FTP and don’t edit your theme from Appearace > Theme Editor.

When you update your theme, all modifications will be lost. If you want to avoid that, create a child theme for your changes. Then only edit the child then, which makes your edits update-safe.

The place between the menu and content where we’re going to place our Smart Slider 3 Slider

Let’s open up the theme’s header.php file located at /wp-content/themes/twentynineteen.
Find the following code:
Go to the Smart Slider 3 slider you want to publish and copy its PHP code. It will be something like echo do_shortcode('[smartslider3 slider=1]');
Write the following code to your theme’s file, just below
This code makes sure your slider will only show up in your home page. If you want to have the slider on all pages, skip this step.
Put the PHP code you copied in step 3 to the 3rd line of the code, like this:

This is how the final result should look like:

Save the file and upload it back your site.

That’s it, the slider will show up in your home page now.

Twenty Nineteen slider on the homepage using Smart Slider 3

Ready to Get Started?

Overall, Twenty Nineteen is a great new addition to the collection of WordPress default themes. It has a clean, elegant design that’s easy to customize and adapt for any kind of site.

Want to add a slider to Twenty Nineteen? With Smart Slider 3, you can easily add sliders to the new theme using the new block editor. Try Smart Slider 3 for free today!

Have you used Twenty Nineteen? What customizations have you made? Let us know in the comments below!

The post How to Add WordPress Sliders to Twenty Nineteen appeared first on Smart Slider 3 — WordPress Plugin.

The 8 Best Quality WordPress Themes with Sliders

Raelene Morey — Thu, 24 May 2018 19:30:35 +0000

Strong imagery is a must for any website, but even more so if you have a commercial need to promote your work or sell your products online. One of the best ways to showcase your images is using WordPress themes with sliders.

WordPress themes that integrate with sliders – and vice versa – provide an ideal way to display multiple images fluidly and in an eye-catching way that grabs your visitors’ attention the moment they land on your site.

But before you go downloading that theme you like with its shiny built-in slider, there are a few things you need to know first…

The Problem with Bundled Slider Plugins

What you might not know is that themes that offer slider functionality usually provide it via a third-party plugin. Here’s how it works:

The theme author buys an extended license for a slider plugin from a plugin developer, and
This extended license allows the theme author to include the slider with a theme they sell.

A popular example of this is Slider Revolution, which is by far the most popular slider plugin for WordPress. How did it get so popular? It is bundled with hundreds of themes in the hugely popular ThemeForest marketplace, including Avada, the best-selling theme of all time on the site.

You might be thinking, bundling plugins with themes makes sense. After all, if a theme author designs a theme to include a hero slider header, they should provide the functionality to achieve it. Plus, bundling plugins makes it easier for users to get a site up and running quickly since they don’t have to buy additional plugins to use with the theme.

Yes, it does make sense. But it’s important to be aware of a few traps. Specifically:

Bundled slider plugins can only be used under the same license as the theme they came with, i.e. you can’t use the slider plugin with a different theme;
If you need help using the slider plugin, you’ll need to get in touch with the theme author you purchased from during your support period – you can’t access support directly from the slider plugin developer; and
Bundled plugins can only be updated when a new version of the theme they are attached to is released. Unless you buy the slider plugin separately, you’ll have to wait until the author of the theme provides the latest version of the bundled plugin with their next theme update.

When users purchase a theme bundled with a slider plugin and later realize the plugin they thought they had also purchased is completely useless with other themes, well… let’s just say it’s caused confusion and later frustration amongst ThemeForest customers:

Look, I’m not out to bash Slider Revolution here. I think it’s a fantastic plugin. It’s just unfortunate that the licensing around bundled plugins – especially themes bundled with slider plugins – is confusing. Users aren’t getting what they thought they paid for.

Which is why I think the solution is to use standalone plugins.

Why Standalone Plugins Are Best

A standalone plugin is a plugin that you download or buy on its own, i.e. it doesn’t come bundled with another product. You can download standalone plugins from the official WordPress Plugin Directory and from marketplaces like CodeCanyon (which is part of the Envato company umbrella that ThemeForest also falls under).

When you download a standalone plugin, you get all the benefits of a regular license, including:

You can use the plugin independently with any theme;
You can update the plugin whenever there are new updates available from the developer – you don’t need to wait until your theme can be updated; and
You get access to support.

If you’re launching a new website or planning a redesign and know that you’ll need a slider, it’s best to download or buy it separately from a trusted slider developer. This way, you’ll know that the plugin will work with any theme and if you need support you can count on a quick response from the very people who built it.

Smart Slider 3: The Highest Rated Slider Plugin for WordPress

When it comes to slider plugins, yes, Slider Revolution is the most popular premium option. But did you know Smart Slider 3 is the highest-rated slider plugin for WordPress? With 430 five-star reviews and 200,000 active installs recorded in the WordPress Plugin Directory, you can’t go wrong. Plus, it’s free to download.

There’s a pro version of the plugin, which I’ve compared with Slider Revolution here. But really, the free version is all you need to get started adding a beautiful slider to your website.

Let’s take a look at themes that integrate nicely with Smart Slider 3, along with ideas for how you can feature sliders in your theme.

Best Free WordPress Themes with Sliders

Since Smart Slider 3 is free, you might want to pair it with a free WordPress theme:

Neve

Neve is one of the most popular free theme in the WordPress Plugin Directory with 20,000 active installs. It also features a nice, big hero header for displaying images, which is pretty handy if you want to display a hero header slider.

Fortunately, ThemeIsle, the team behind this theme, have put together a handy guide to replacing the “Big Title” section with an image slider. In Smart Slider 3, you just need to copy your slider’s shortcode or PHP code and paste it into Neve’s big_title.php file as instructed.

OceanWP

OceanWP is a free multipurpose WordPress theme that’s easy to adjust for responsive design, ensuring it looks great on any device. There are 13 free demos to choose from, which all feature different layouts.

Adding a hero slider header is as easy as inserting the shortcode for your slider into OceanWP’s settings, which you can learn more about here. Depending on your design, you could display your latest posts as a slider, or stick with a hero slider header.

Here’s just one example of a free slider template from Smart Slider 3 that you could easily insert into your theme and edit to match your branding.

GeneratePress

GeneratePress is a fast, lightweight WordPress theme with a modular structure that makes it easy to customize.

Adding a slider to this theme is straightforward. Whether you want to add a homepage slider, testimonial carousel, or post showcase, you can simply add your slider shortcode into the “Content” section of the page header metabox (if you’re using the Page Header add-on).

Otherwise, if your homepage is your blog, you can go to Appearance > Blog Page Header and insert your slider shortcode into the content section of that page (also using the Page Header add-on). You can learn more here.

Astra

For a free theme, Astra is gorgeous – the team who built it obviously have an eye for design.

Astra works great with the Elementor page builder plugin, which allows you to customize your pages via drag and drop. With Elementor, you can add sliders anywhere on your site by inserting your slider shortcode into your theme. WPCrafter.com explains how to work with Astra’s headers using Elementor in this instructional video.

Startup Blog

The Startup Blog theme is a beautiful, minimalist WordPress theme you can get for free. It features a nice looking post slider at the top of the page, immediately encouraging visitors to check them out. Since it’s a free theme, it doesn’t have a built-in page builder. But the good news is, Startup Blog plays very well with Elementor. Did you know that at the moment Elementor has more than 3 million active installations? It’s safe to say this is the most popular free page builder plugin in 2019. By the way, the theme is also Gutenberg compatible.

Startup Blog isn’t just Elementor and Gutenberg but Smart Slider 3 friendly as well. You can put the slider’s shortcode to any post or page and the slider will show up there. If you would like to replace the header slider with Smart Slider 3, you’ll need to modify the theme. But the developers coded Startup Blog so well that this will be very easy.

Need help to get started? Startup blog theme has a very detailed documentation. It teaches you everything from the basics to the more advanced settings. All steps are explained in detail, with pictures. Thanks to this, you’ll be able to set up this beautiful theme in no time!

Best Premium WordPress Themes with Sliders

When you’re ready to take your website to the next level, a premium theme can provide you even more features. Here’s a select list of themes that work great with WordPress sliders.

Avada

As I mentioned above, Avada is the best-selling WordPress theme in the ThemeForest marketplace with 425k+ sales. It comes bundled with 3 premium sliders – Layer Slider, Slider Revolution, and Fusion Slider. But again, when you use one of these plugins it means you’ll only get a limited feature set, no support, and you won’t be able to update the plugin..

With Smart Slider 3, you can easily add a slider to any page or post using the theme’s Fusion Page Options or Fusion Builder Elements. For example, say you wanted to add a static slider to the Avada theme using Smart Slider 3. You could easily insert the free template slider below – or any one of Smart Sliders 100+ templates – using Fusion’s features and make further customizations to suit the style of your site.

BeTheme

With more than 330 pre-built templates, BeTheme is a hugely popular option for users who want to build a stunning WordPress site with ease. Like other popular premium WordPress themes, it comes with page building functionality – Muffin Builder 3 and WPBakery Page Builder.

With these page building tools, all you need to do is insert your slider shortcode into any post or page to display a beautiful slider, whether it’s a product slider like this:

X Theme

With X Theme, you can achieve virtually any look and layout for your website using one of the 4 pre-built “stacks” (i.e. starter themes), which you can then customize using Cornerstone. The team behind X Theme developed the Cornerstone page builder to give users the freedom and flexibility to make front-end customizations and create any design you want.

X Theme comes bundled with Slider Revolution, LayerSlider, and Soliloquy. Again, with a free standalone plugin such as Smart Slider 3 you’ll get full slider functionality. Just like the other slider plugins, all you need to do is copy your shortcode from Smart Slider 3 and, using Cornerstone, paste it on your site where you want to display your slider/s.

For example, say you wanted to add a slider section to the band theme demo above. With Smart Slider 3 you could create a section displaying your latest posts, like so:

Conclusion

When it comes to WordPress themes with sliders, your choices are endless. The truth is, you don’t need to download or buy a theme with a “built-in slider” because there’s no such thing – themes with sliders use third-party plugins in order to provide that functionality.

So why not cut out the middleman and download a free slider that’s better than any bundled slider plugin? Smart Slider 3 can help you create any kind of slider you want, from homepage hero sliders to testimonial carousel, post showcases, fullscreen sliders, and even simple hero blocks. You’re only limited by your imagination.

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