Now, without any further ado, let’s jump into the world of animations in Smart Slider 3.

📚 Table of contents

🎓 Getting Started with Smart Slider 3
⚙️ Understanding Slide Animations
⚡ Dynamic Text Effects: How to Animate Text
🔎 Bringing Depth with Zoom Effect
🌊 Making Waves: Using Wave Animation
💻 Storytelling with Timeline Animations
🎨 Customization
✏️ Best Practices for Animation Usage
💡 Conclusion

Getting Started with Smart Slider 3

Okay, let’s get things going by introducing you to the amazing world of Smart Slider 3. You can install the plugin now if you haven’t yet done it on your WordPress website. You’ll be stunned by its user-friendly interface and cool features, I promise.

Making your first slider is simple once Smart Slider 3 is up and running. Just follow these easy steps:

1. Making a New Slider:

• Go to your WordPress dashboard and select “Smart Slider 3” from the menu on the left.
• Select the “New Project” button, and voilá a new slider was born.

2. Selecting a Template (Optional):

• Smart Slider has got you covered even if you are not a design guru, so don’t worry. To spark your imagination, you might choose a pre-made template.
• There’s a huge selection of eye-catching templates to pick from, and they can all be customized to match the feel of your website.

3. Adding Slides and Content:

• Now comes the more enjoyable part. Slides should be added to your slider and it should be filled with interesting text, eye-catching images, and anything else you want to highlight.
• You are not restricted to a single layout with Smart Slider 3. Allow your creativity to soar!

4. Customize Your Slider:

• To customize the behavior and appearance of your slider, take a look at the slider settings. You can change the slider transition, the autoplay, the navigation, and much more.
• Pay attention to the responsive settings to make sure your slider looks good on desktop and mobile devices.

Now that you are familiar with the basics of setting up your slider, let’s get into the world of animations and effects that will make your slider stand out. Let’s get started!

Understanding Slide Animations

Alright, here’s where the real magic begins! Slide animations are like the secret ingredient that adds that wow factor to your sliders. These transitions between slides can be subtle and smooth or bold and eye-catching, depending on the vibe you want to create.

How to Apply Slide Animations

1. Select Your Slide:

• Open up your Smart Slider 3 editor and choose the slide you want to add animations to. Remember, each slide can have its own unique animation.

2. Explore Animation Options:

• Once you’ve selected the slide, head to the “Animations” tab in the slide settings. Here, you’ll find a treasure trove of animation effects waiting for you.

3. Pick Your Animation:

• From classic fade-ins to dynamic move-ins and captivating zoom effects, Smart Slider 3 offers an impressive range of animations to choose from.
• Go ahead and experiment with different animations to see which one complements your content and brand the best.

Top Tip: Less is often more when it comes to slide animations. Subtle and elegant transitions can have a more significant impact on your audience than an overload of flashy effects. Keep your focus on enhancing the content and user experience.

Example Animations

Not sure which animation to go with? Let’s explore a couple of scenarios where specific animations shine:

• Fade-In:  Ideal for a clean and professional look, the fade-in animation smoothly transitions between slides without stealing the show. It’s perfect for minimalistic designs and when you want to keep the focus on your content.
• Move from Left or Right: Want to make a bold statement? The move-in effect from either side can add that extra punch to your slider. Use it to introduce new sections or showcase striking visuals.
• Zoom Effect: Ah, the beloved zoom effect! If you have stunning images or products to flaunt, this animation can make them pop on the screen. Your audience won’t be able to take their eyes off your slider.

 

Remember, Smart Slider 3 gives you the flexibility to set the animation speed and even add delays if you want to create a well-choreographed presentation.

Now it’s time to let your creativity run wild and make your slides come alive with animations that leave your visitors wanting more.

Dynamic Text Effects: How to Animate Text

Okay, now we’ve got the hang of slide animations, but let’s take it to the next level! Your text elements are your slider’s storytellers. In addition, they add a whole new level of interactivity and engagement.

Ready? Let’s get started and see how we can animate text and engage your audience!

How to Animate Text

1. Add Your Text Element:

• To animate text, start by adding the text that you want to animate using either the Heading layer or the Animated Heading Layer. This could be a headline or any text you want to emphasize.

2. Add Text Animation:

• Once you’ve added your Heading Layer, navigate to the “Text Animation” sections of your layer’s Content settings. Here you’ll find a variety of text animation options to choose from.

3. Explore Styles:

• Check out Smart Slider 3’s selection they offer you to animate your text in different styles.
• On each heading, you can set both an Incoming and Outgoing animation. Whatever you are looking for you’ll be spoiled for choice.
• In addition, you can change other aspects of the animation to fine-tune it to your unique preferences.

4. Animated Heading Layer:

• On the other hand, you can also go for the Animated Heading Layer, which is perfect if you want to change a specific part of the text to another one from a list. However, this effect only works if you have at least two lines of text in the Animated Text field.

 

Pro Tip: Ensure that the way you animate your text matches your brand’s personality and your website’s theme. It’s important to stay consistent to create a polished and professional look.

When Should You Animate Text?

There are many ways to animate your text and add value to your content. Let’s look at some cases.

1. Catchy Headlines:

• • For your headline, you can use the Typewriter effect to reveal your headline letter by letter. This will create anticipation and intrigue in your visitors’ minds.
  • Play around with different text animations for your Headings, they can add a nice touch to your content, in a subtle way.

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2. Portfolio:

• • However, there are other ways it can be used to create interest, like sharing information about yourself. Adding a slow and elegant animation is the best way to make your portfolio impressive.

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3. Quotes:

• If you have great quotes and testimonials that you want people to read, you can choose from all the different incoming animations Smart Slider 3 offers, to focus on those impactful words.

Don’t overdo it: While text animations are a great way to grab the reader’s attention, don’t go overboard. Stick to what’s important and use animations to highlight those elements. Remember, a tiny bit of animation can make a difference in keeping your audience interested. Let your text speak for itself.

You are now in control of how your text looks and feels, so let’s create a slider that’s full of dynamic text effects.

Bringing Depth with Zoom Effect

The zoom effect is a great way to add depth and dynamics to your slide. It’s an effect that instantly draws attention to certain parts of the slide. Besides, it makes them look bigger and more alive.

How to Use the Zoom Effect

1. Select the Layer to Zoom:

• To use the zoom effect, select the layer you want to use a zoom effect on. You can use any slide element, such as an image, text, or even a heading.

2. Add a Zoom Effect:

• Once you’ve selected the element you want to add a zoom effect to, go to the layer settings and click on the “Animation” tab. You’ll see a list of options however, we’ll only need the scale animation.
• Under it choose the one that suits your slide. Decide if you want to bring your content closer to your audience or create a subtle downscaling effect. Then, adjust its settings to your preferences. There are many different ways to use this zoom effect in Smart Slider 3.

3. Use the Ken Burn Effect:

• Another way to add a unique zooming effect to your content, specifically to your background images, is to use the popular Ken Burns effect.
• Head to your slider’s Animations settings and under the Background Animation section enable the Ken Burn Effect. It’s extremely simple and elegant.

 

Pro Tip: Strategically use the zoom effect to highlight important content or product details. You can also use it as a soft hover effect to captivate users when they are interacting with your slider.

Creative Ways to Use the Zoom Effect

1. Product Showcase:

• If you are running an e-commerce site, highlight your product images with the zoom effect. Showing off your best offers will make your customers feel more confident in their purchase decision.

2. Interactive Image Gallery:

• Create an interactive image gallery with the zoom effect. When your visitors hover over your images, they will get a much closer look, creating an interactive and immersive experience for your visitors.

3. Elevate Your Background:

• • Move your background a bit, by adding the Ken Burn Effect. This zoom effect is simple and elegant and works on any kind of image.

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Zoom effects are a great way to add depth to your slides. However, it’s important that you remember that you don’t want to use too many zoom effects on your slider. Instead, focus on one or two essential elements to zoom in or out on and let them take the spotlight.

Making Waves: Using Wave Animation

Wave animations are the perfect way to add vibrancy to your sliders. So, let’s dive deep into the world of wave animations and learn how to bring your content to life.

How to Use the Wave Animation

1. Add Wave Animation to Your Background:

• You can add it to your background in Smart Slider 3, so think about what slider’s background can benefit from a bit of motion.
• Once you’ve chosen your slider, go to your Slider Settings page and choose the Animations tab. Inside the Background Animations section, you are provided with two different options to add a wave animation to your slider’s background. (Morph – Wave, Distortion – Wave) This type of animation will be only noticed when your visitors switch between slides.

Check out these templates to see them in action:

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2. Add a Wave Animation as a Divider:

• You can also add a wave animation as a Shape Divider. Just below the Background Animation section, you can spot the Shape Divider option. They are perfect for creating smooth and interesting transitions between the sections of your website.

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• What’s even more, is that each shape has its own unique animation, which you can fully customize. In addition, many of them are designed as animated wave-like shapes, and setting them to continuously move creates a simply marvelous result.

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3. Wave Animation Settings:

• Plus, Smart Slider 3 lets you customize the wave effect, giving you complete control over the intensity of the wave animation. Keep in mind that the goal is to add a thoughtful touch to your content, not overshadow it.

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All in all, adding a wave animation can be a great way to give your sliders a magical touch that will keep your visitors engaged and interested in your content, so let your creativity flow.

Storytelling with Timeline Animations

In Smart Slider 3 each layer animation is shown on a timeline, where you can change its delay and duration. If you click on an animation, it will open the layer window’s animation tab, where you can edit the animation you’ve chosen.

When you press the space key, animations will start up, giving you a preview of what they’ll look like.

Another awesome thing about timeline animations is that you can copy and paste the animation from layer to layer. So if you’ve made a really complex animation, all you have to do is copy it to different layers and you can save yourself time and effort.

Tips on Creating Timeline Animations

• Top Tip: Keep your timeline animation short and to the point. Focus on what matters the most to keep your audience engaged and avoid overloading them with too much information.
• Use timeline animations to create a seamless narrative that grabs your audience’s attention.
• Combine engaging content with smooth animations and you’ll have a mesmerizing storytelling experience that’s unlike anything you’ve seen before.

Use the timeline animations to bring life to your slider and create an unforgettable story.

Customization

Now, that you’ve learned about the different animations and effects, your slider is more interesting than ever before. But don’t worry, we’re not finished yet. In this part, we’ll customize and personalize your designs until they are absolutely perfect. So, let’s get started.

Additional Animation Settings

1. Duration and Delay:

• Change the duration of your animations to control how fast or slow a layer animates, and you can also add delays to create a timed animation sequence.

2. Layer Alignment:

• Ensure the correct positioning of your animated layers with alignment settings. It’s the small details that matter!

3. Mix and Match:

• The fun part starts when you start mixing different animations and effects together. All of the above-mentioned animations and more are here at your disposal to create hypnotic effects that grab your audience’s attention and keep them glued to your content. So don’t be afraid to mix and match!

So now that you mastered the basics of animation, you’re ready to take your website sliders to the next level. Show off your creativity and let your website sliders steal the show.

Best Practices for Animation Usage

You’ve learned how to use Smart Slider 3’s animations and effects with ease. Now, let’s look at some important best practices to make the most of these dynamic tools while keeping your website fresh and professional.

Tips for Using Animations Tastefully

• Keep It Simple: Animations can be a great way to grab your audience’s attention but don’t overload your slider with a ton of effects. Too many effects can be distracting and overwhelming.
• Keep It Inline with Your Brand: Make sure your animations match your brand’s identity and design. Stick to a consistent style and color scheme to reinforce your message and create a unified experience for your audience.

User-Friendly Experience

• Navigation: Make sure your slider’s navigation is easy to understand and use. Give a clear overview of how the slider should be navigated.
• Attention Span: Attract your audience’s attention in the first few seconds. Avoid animations that are too long, as visitors may lose interest and move on.
• Testing: Make sure to test and preview the slider on different devices and browsers to ensure it works properly and looks the way you want it to.

By following these tips, you can make your sliders look amazing and not only let your audience see what you have to offer but also make their experience on your website better. Keep in mind that the key is to find the perfect balance between creativity and usability.

Conclusion

To sum up, your sliders will be full of life and imagination. From slide animation and zoom effect to how to animate text and create wave animation, we’ve even touched upon the captivating timeline animation and more. You’ve come a long way on this animation journey and Smart Slider 3 has been the perfect partner along the way.

Keep in mind that the best way to use animations is to keep them tasteful, relevant, and in line with your brand’s identity. Less is more when it comes to animations, a cohesive and visually appealing slider will leave your visitors with a lasting impression.

Thank you for joining us in this journey of animations and effects! Your commitment to improving the visual appeal of your website and engaging your audience is truly admirable.

The post How to Animate Text & Images Like a Pro appeared first on Smart Slider 3 — WordPress Plugin.

]]> https://smartslider3.com/blog/how-to-use-shape-backgrounds-in-web-design/ Thu, 04 May 2023 05:53:11 +0000 https://smartslider3.com/?post_type=blog&p=52109 It’s more essential than ever to create a website that stands out from the competition in this fast-paced digital world that we live in. Making use of unique shape backgrounds in your website design is one way to stand out. Your website’s background can be made aesthetically engaging and dynamic by implementing geometric and abstract […]

The post How to Use Shape Backgrounds in Web Design? appeared first on Smart Slider 3 — WordPress Plugin.

]]> It’s more essential than ever to create a website that stands out from the competition in this fast-paced digital world that we live in. Making use of unique shape backgrounds in your website design is one way to stand out. Your website’s background can be made aesthetically engaging and dynamic by implementing geometric and abstract shapes, which will draw in more visitors.

Do not worry if you are unfamiliar with shape backgrounds and are unsure of how to begin. With the help of Smart Slider’s unique features, you can design beautiful shape backgrounds for your website without knowing how to code.

We’ll go over the fundamentals of using Smart Slider to make a shape background in this article, including ideas for picking the best shapes, detailed guides for adding and modifying shapes and backgrounds in Smart Slider, and recommendations for positioning and layering them to produce a pleasing design.

We’ll assist you through the progress of your shape and background design, we’ll also look at some of Smart Slider’s unique features, such as icon layers, shape dividers, and absolute layers.

Therefore, it doesn’t matter where you stand currently in your journey, you can be an experienced web designer or you can be completely new to all this, this article is for everyone who is interested in how to create beautiful shape backgrounds.

📚 Table of contents

⚡ Understanding Background Shapes
✏️ Getting Started with Smart Slider
🎓 Smart Slider for Advanced Shape Background Design
💻 Tips and Best Practices for Using Shapes in Web Design
🏗️ Enhancing Your Shape Background Design
💡 Conclusion

Understanding Background Shapes

Firstly, let’s define shape backgrounds and why graphic designers use them, before getting into the actual steps on how to create them in Smart Slider.

The phrase shape background in web design is a design feature that gives the background of a website more physic and texture. A range of shapes, including geometric shapes and abstract shapes, can be used creatively to create stunning patterns. They can be layered and organized in various ways to produce a visually appealing and dynamic design that grabs the audience’s attention.

So why do graphic designers use shapes in their web design? Well, there are several motives:

• Shapes increase visual appeal. A background made entirely white might be dull and uninspiring. Your design can benefit from adding shapes to the background to help break up the monotony and create visual appeal.
• Shapes can also add dimensions and depth. Your design can appear more dynamic and interesting if you layer shapes on top of each other to give it a sense of volume.
• Shapes are perfect for supporting the identity of your brand. You may as well strengthen your brand’s messaging and make your entire design more united by making use of shapes that are consistent with your brand’s visual identity.

With these, we already covered the basics of shape backgrounds and their importance in web design, let’s go on to discuss how to create them using Smart Slider.

Getting Started with Smart Slider

Without any coding experience, you can simply design beautiful background shapes for your website with Smart Slider. Start by following these actions:

Set Up and Run Smart Slider

You must install and activate Smart Slider on your WordPress website if you haven’t previously. This can be done by finding Smart Slider in the Plugins section in your WordPress dashboard, then clicking the Install and Activate buttons.

 

Create a New Slider

After it has been activated, go to the Smart Slider section of your WordPress dashboard and select New Project. You can either use a template or start from scratch.

Find Templates for Your Projects

Browsing the template library you can find many pre-made templates. Most of them make use of different shape backgrounds that you can add as a starting point for your own background design. Look through them and choose the ones that you like.

Add Layers

After this, you can start adding the preferred shapes to your slider’s background. It’s simple, just click on the green “+” button, and from the layers tab select the layers you want to add then drag and drop it into your slide. So if you want to create shape backgrounds using different layers, you can do so with an Image layer, Icon layer, or even with a Highlighted Heading layer.

Set an Optimal Size and Position for Your Shapes

To do so, click on the layer, and in its settings panel you can find each setting under its content and style tab that you can use to make changes. You can also rotate, skew, flip, and so on to animate them.

Add Extra Layers to Your Layout

Select the Layer tab and choose as many suitable layers as you want for your design, including Text layers, Video layers, and Button layers, the list goes on.

This is it, now you can create a minimal shape background in Smart Slider by simply following the actions above. For a more advanced background design follow along, and we’ll explore how Smart Slider’s unique features can take your game to the next level.

Smart Slider for Advanced Shape Background Design

Although it’s fairly simple to create a simple shape background in Smart Slider, there are a number of advanced features that can help you make even more striking designs.

Let’s check them out!

Shape Divider

Your website’s different parts can be divided using the Shape Divider feature of Smart Slider in an appealing shape design. This gives you the opportunity to hand your website a unique flow that helps you capture your visitors’ attention.

How to use shape dividers in Smart Slider?

1. Install Smart Slider 3 Pro
2. Go to the Slider settings → Animations tab
3. Effects → Click on the Shape Divider
4. Choose a top or bottom shape
5. Customize it
6. Publish your slider

What are some different types of shape dividers in web design?

• Broken Grid Layout

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• Slider Blocks

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• Animated Divider

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• A Separator Between Sections

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• Design Element

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Icon Layer

The Icon layer is yet another sophisticated element of Smart Slider. You can add an icon to your background design using this layer to give it more visual appeal with different shapes. Applying icons in your design is a great way to give it more context and increase user engagement.

Click the Layers button at the top of the Smart Slider editor and choose the Icon layer type to add an Icon layer to your design. There, you can select from a variety of icons, including 5 different libraries. Further settings allow you to change your icon’s size, location, and normal and hover color.

Absolute Layers

You can add layers that are not restricted to the bounds of the slide, this is made easy by using Smart Slider’s Absolute Layers. Click the Layers button at the top of the Slide editor and choose the Absolute layer type to add an Absolute layer to your layout. Images, texts, and videos can all be added as different layers from that point on. In addition, Smart Slider also allows you to change the orientation, size, and position of your Absolute layers.

As a result, you may build patterns that seem to float above your background or layers by either moving on top of each other or overlapping them.

This gives your website a distinctive and lively appearance with rare background shapes that can even be geometric or abstract.

Besides, they are also useful if you want to create depth for your layers. One way to do this is by adding a color gradient to your shape background for a subtle effect.

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Particle effect

Finally, you can make your website more memorable for your visitors by setting up a Particle Effect in Smart Slider. It is a unique technique not so commonly used in web design. It adds a big amount of tiny shapes to your background, which are continuously moving. What’s more, they can interact with each other when they get close enough, it can happen, for example, with a line that connects them.

 

Here’s a quick video guide on where to find it in Smart Slider:

 

In Smart Slider 3 you can choose from 9 different types of Particle Effects.

Here are some examples:

• Banking App

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• Christmas Ornament Shop

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• Crypto Block

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These effects are pre-made by us, but they have minor configuration options. For instance, you can change the color or line color, even the speed, but you can’t change the shape of them.

However, if you need to use custom shapes, you can build your own effect and paste its code into the slider.

You can develop your shape background design and make a totally distinctive and captivating website by utilizing these sophisticated capabilities with your slider. We’ll look at some examples and best practices for how to use shapes in web design in the section that follows.

Tips and Best Practices for Using Shapes in Web Design

Let’s dive into some advice and best practices for using shapes in web design now that we’ve covered the fundamentals of making shape backgrounds and looked at some of Smart Slider’s more complex features.

Simple is Best

Keeping it basic is one of the most crucial things to have in mind while using shapes in web design. While advanced shapes can be visually stunning, they can also be intimidating to website visitors. Instead, concentrate on selecting shapes that are easy on the eyes so they can go well with the overall design and content of your website.

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Use Shapes to Guide the User’s Eye

Shapes can also be used to direct the user’s eye in web design. It is a fantastic advantage that comes with implementing them. You can utilize these benefits by creating an easy-to-navigate visual hierarchy, which shows your users the importance of each element on your website. Furthermore, placing each shape strategically draws the visitors’ eyes to the main content that you would like to primarily introduce.

Abstract Shapes Background

Don’t limit your design to the most basic shapes. While geometric shapes can be useful in many cases for your web design, there are a huge amount of unique shapes that are worth experimenting with. Exhibit your brand’s creativity with more aesthetic and original designs. Try implementing more abstract shapes into your background.

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Have a Look at the Color and Contrast

It is important to take a look at the color and contrast of our background shapes. We should always keep in mind that our shape background design is always clear and readable to the user. To achieve this ensure that your shapes have enough contrast and only use those colors that suit the color strategy of the website.

 

• Undiscovered Universe

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• Agency

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Consistent Brand Image with Shapes

Last but not least, unify the image of your brand by presenting your company with the same background shapes and colors through all your marketing channels. Stay consistent with it and in the long run, it will help your brand catch the eye of potential users simply with its recognizable visuals.

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Now, you can also design abstract, geometric, and all kinds of shape backgrounds if you employ these steps in your design. Follow along for a few more tips in the next section.

Enhancing Your Shape Background Design

Animation

You can add as many animations to your shape backgrounds as you want. One way to achieve this result is to simply add it to the layers, which you can do in the Slide settings’ Animation tab. This offers a wide range of animation types, including fade, reveal, and move effects.

The Timeline lets you modify the delay and duration of each animation, which can help you with achieving your goal.

In addition to layer animations, you can also add different effects directly to your shape backgrounds. You can find each one under the Slider settings’ Animations tab.

Besides animation, there are other design elements that you can implement into your overall look, like images and text.

Highlighted Heading

A stunning way to integrate text into your shape background design is to add Highlighted Heading layers in Smart Slider. It’s important to note that if you make your background too stuffed, then balancing the hierarchy between the background and the foreground is essential.

Therefore, there shouldn’t be too many drowning overlays. But don’t worry these issues can be easily solved by Smart Slider’s Highlighted Heading layer. Placing highlights around and behind your headings will help with readability for your visitors.

Moreover, it offers many unique background shapes for your text as well. It gives you more freedom in your design, as this way you can easily add any text that is placed on top of your shape background.

Check out some of Smart Slider’s outstanding examples of this technique:

• Organic Food

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• Renovation

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• Cooking Slider

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Try experimenting with different types of shapes, colors, and animations to create your own unique slider for your website. Build your own shape background design that gives your website more visibility with its unmatched shape design. As you can see, Smart Slider offers you endless possibilities to make this happen.

Conclusion

In this post, we looked at the various types of shape backgrounds used in web design and demonstrated how to make each one with Smart Slider. Moreover, we have discussed the fundamentals of making shape backgrounds as well as some of the more complex tools of Smart Slider that can help you create them.

Furthermore, we’ve also talked about various ideas and the best ways for using shapes in web design, such as keeping things straightforward, adding shapes to direct the user’s eye, and developing a unified brand identity.

It’s time to start exploring and making your own designs now that you have a firm understanding of shape backgrounds and how to make them with Smart Slider. Besides, using shapes in your design will help you produce a visually appealing and engaging website that stands out from the competition, whether you’re developing a new website or updating an old one.

All in all, why not start making your own shape backgrounds right away by using Smart Slider? It’s the ideal tool for anyone wishing to advance their web design thanks to its easy-to-use interface and impressive functionality.

It’s also worth your time to check our tutorial videos by which you can learn a lot.

Happy designing, and thanks for reading!

The post How to Use Shape Backgrounds in Web Design? appeared first on Smart Slider 3 — WordPress Plugin.

]]> https://smartslider3.com/blog/parallax-effect/ Fri, 19 Aug 2022 06:10:11 +0000 https://smartslider3.com/?post_type=blog&p=17662 Browsers and web development techniques are improving. This makes it possible to show amazing effects on your website. One of these happens to have been the biggest trend of web design in the past years: the parallax effect. Many popular websites choose this spectacular effect to wow their visitors. But what’s all the hype about […]

The post Everything You Need to Know about the Parallax Effect appeared first on Smart Slider 3 — WordPress Plugin.

]]> Browsers and web development techniques are improving. This makes it possible to show amazing effects on your website. One of these happens to have been the biggest trend of web design in the past years: the parallax effect. Many popular websites choose this spectacular effect to wow their visitors. But what’s all the hype about parallax effect?

Well, people like it because it’s based on a very simple idea and it works on any page. The parallax effect activates when you start scrolling the page content. It makes the background move at a different speed than the foreground content. Typically, people use it on images, which they place between sections that have a solid background color. The parallax is on the background image, which stays still or moves barely. Meanwhile, he section above uncovers, and the one below covers it.

How does the parallax effect work?

The parallax effect creates the illusion of depth when the page moves. So the visitor needs to scroll to see the action. It creates a great user experience, because there are no sudden movements. The visitor of the page is in control of the whole effect. But what makes the illusion? The part of the site which is farthest from the user moves at the slowest speed. It’s almost like when you’re in a car and look out of the window. The guard rail seems to move fast next to you, but the trees in the distance move much slower.

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Although the parallax effect is a background scrolling effect, it doesn’t need to move the image at all. In fact, it looks as spectacular whether the background image moves or not. Additionally, you can take advantage of this modern effect in several use cases. For instance, you can add parallax scrolling effect to your landing, sales or homepage, or any page.

Parallax slider effects in Smart Slider 3

Smart Slider 3 offers many ways to use a parallax effect on your website. The most common usage is the background parallax. This way, there’s an image in the background that creates the illusion of depth. Smart Slider 3 offers much more possibilities than the “standard” parallax. You can use the effect on layers, where the visitor can trigger them by scrolling or moving the mouse. There are other parallax effects which Smart Slider 3 offers, so let’s check them out!

1. Background parallax

The background parallax is the most popular usage of the effect. This usage respects the original idea, so when the visitor scrolls down on the page, they can see the effect. Usually there is a background image on the website with parallax. Web designers like to put a single colored section around the parallax, one above and one below. As a result, the illusion makes it look as if the static section revealed then covered the image. The best part is that this effect works on mobile phones and tablets as well.

2. Slide switching parallax

The scroll parallax slider looks great, but it can’t work in cases when the page has nothing but a slider. Luckily, the slide switching parallax only needs at least two images in your slider. You can then enable the parallax switching animation at the Background animation. The Background animation contains a bunch of cool slide switching effects, and being able to create a parallax-like movement adds a nice touch to it.

You can also give this effect a try, if you’re tired of the common slide animation. After all, plain sliding slides are everywhere and getting kind of boring. Why not spice things up a little bit?

3. Layer parallax

In the era of modern web technologies, it’s not enough to show a couple of static images to the visitor. You need to amaze them and make them want to explore your site, otherwise, they can leave fast. You need them to want to see what kind of visual surprises it has as fast as possible. Showing a simple image slider might not create a memorable encounter. But a parallax effect where the layers move as the visitor scrolls will achieve this goal.

You can add any kind of content to your slider using Smart Slider 3’s layers. You can add nice captions, social icons, call to action buttons and images. It’s better to let the most important content catch the visitor’s attention, and not its background. To help you stand out of the crowd, we made the parallax effect available for every layer. This makes your website (and parallax slider) unique. And your visitors will love the results!

4. Mouse parallax

In most cases, you’ll see the scrolling parallax effect on websites. But that’s not the only way to use it. In fact, you can have a parallax effect based on the cursor movement. It’s called the mouse parallax effect, and it uses the mouse cursor position on the slider area. It creates the illusion of depth for the layers visible on the current slide. For example, your cursor enters the slider and the layers start to move away or approach to the cursor. It depends on your choice, so you can create something nice.

All in all, this is a remarkable visual effect yet few sites use it. The interaction makes it fun to play with how the objects change their positions. This is an effect which all visitors are going to love.

5. 3D layer parallax

The parallax effect lets you create outstanding effects on your site. Layer parallax is a spectacular animation you can enhance your slider with. While it’s already enough to give an outstanding effect, you can take it to the next level. Smart Slider 3 allows you to add a 3D parallax effect to your layers. The 3D parallax slider effect adds the true feeling of depth to your layers. The layers move not just vertically and horizontally, but in their 3rd dimension as well.

How to add the parallax effect on your website?

Unless you have coding knowledge, the easiest way to use the parallax effect is through a plugin. There are many WordPress plugins offering the functionality to use the parallax effect. They offer some features which help you create a beautiful parallax effect on your site. One of the most notable plugins is Smart Slider 3, which is a favored slider plugin.

I know what you’re thinking: I want to create a parallax effect, not a slider! No problem. Smart Slider 3 is a plugin, which you can use not only to create sliders, but animated blocks as well. Using blocks, you can take advantage of many great Smart Slider 3 effects. This way you don’t have to create a slider, but rather a page section. Sounds great, right?

Using Smart Slider 3 Pro to create parallax websites

The parallax effect is the best way to enhance a section of a website. This usually meant adding it to a single background image. As the effect got more popular, web designers started using it more widely. They created video parallax sections to please their visitors. Then as the idea of parallax spread more, people started adding it to sliders as well. Smart Slider 3’s parallax is rock solid and it works well in all browsers, whether you use it as a block or as a slider.

The post Everything You Need to Know about the Parallax Effect appeared first on Smart Slider 3 — WordPress Plugin.

]]> https://smartslider3.com/blog/what-is-a-slider/ Wed, 10 Aug 2022 08:00:55 +0000 https://smartslider3.com/?post_type=blog&p=9831 Sliders. Carousels. Slideshows. No matter what you call them, sliders are an incredibly versatile design tool that allow you to showcase images, video, and other content beautifully and more effectively while maximizing the space on your website. Whether you need a simple way to display a slideshow of photos on an eCommerce or real estate […]

The post What is a Slider? The Ultimate Guide to WordPress Sliders appeared first on Smart Slider 3 — WordPress Plugin.

]]> Sliders. Carousels. Slideshows. No matter what you call them, sliders are an incredibly versatile design tool that allow you to showcase images, video, and other content beautifully and more effectively while maximizing the space on your website.

Whether you need a simple way to display a slideshow of photos on an eCommerce or real estate websites, or want a bold video header with calls-to-action, sliders can help you quickly grab your visitors’ attention.

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In this post, we’ll take a deep dive into sliders, using examples from Smart Slider 3, a popular slider plugin for WordPress. We’ll explore what they are, how they’re used, the various kinds of sliders you can create, as well as all the different types of behaviors, elements, animations and effects you can include in your sliders.

What is a Slider?

The term slider is used for a design element, which is added to a WordPress page to display visual content. From classic image slideshows to modern fullscreen sliders, sliders come in all shapes and sizes. Using the right WordPress slider plugin, it’s easy to create your own sliders.

Designers love sliders for their flexibility and the visual elements that make it easy to tell a compelling story. Site owners, on the other hand, love them because they can promote multiple facets of a business within one website component and space. At their most basic, an image slideshow might contain a series of images, each with its own caption, like this example:

But in recent years, sliders have evolved to provide greater functionality and feature beyond simple images and text. Now, you can add video, use layers to combine images, text, and buttons, and even include a mix of elements and animations — all within the same slider.

Let’s take a look at a few modern examples.

Amazon uses sliders liberally throughout its site to promote its products. On the homepage, there’s a slider with featured products, as well as several small sliders below with best sellers.

In this example, Airbnb uses a slider on its homepage to display cities were people can book short stay accommodation around the world:

And in this more complex example, Lonely Planet uses a fullscreen homepage slider incorporating navigation and text previews to showcase its latest featured articles:

These are just some of the big brands using sliders to showcase their best content while maximizing all-important screen space.

But it’s not just big brands using sliders. Sliders are easy to add to any WordPress site, and there are plenty of options out there, particularly for WordPress users.

How Do Sliders Work with WordPress?

Adding sliders to your WordPress site is as easy as installing and activating a plugin, and then using the provided visual builder to design your slider.

There are many WordPress slider plugins available, which allow you to create sliders and add them to any page or post on your site. You can download free slider plugins from WordPress.org. Below, you’ll see Smart Slider 3 is the highest rated slider plugin for WordPress:

There are also many premium slider plugins available for WordPress, such as Smart Slider 3 Pro and Revolution Slider, the latter of which is packaged with many ThemeForest themes.

Typically, free slider plugins offer only basic features, such as the ability to create image sliders with captions and simple transitions. When you upgrade to a premium slider plugin, you can start building more complex sliders using layers, images, text, videos, CTAs, animations, and more.

Types of Sliders

There are several different types of slider, each of which provides the structure for a slider, on top of which you can add other elements. These are the types of sliders you will find in Smart Slider 3:

• Standard – Also known as a slideshow, this type of slider enables you to display several images, one at a time.
• Carousel – This type of slider displays two or more images at a time, which users can cycle through.
• Showcase – This type of slider lets you put the focus on one image, but also give a sneak peek at other images in the series.
• Block – A content block features just one slide but can include many different elements (text, image, video, etc), animations and effects.

Types of Slider Layouts

In addition to slider types, there are different slider layouts that determine how a slider type will look on a web page.

• Boxed – This is the most typical type of layout you’ll come across on the web, such as an on eCommerce site displaying product items. It makes the slider fit into its container.
• Full width – Display a slider across the entire width of a page.
• Full page – This fullscreen layout fills the entire page above-the-fold.

Working with Slider Layers

Free slider plugins (with the exception of Smart Slider 3) allow you to create only basic slideshows using images and text. Premium slider plugins, on the other hand, let you design to your heart’s content with layers.

Layers are basically content building block that you can add to sliders to create more functional, beautiful, and complex designs. Similarly, Photoshop and other image editing programs use layers to enable users to stack and work with different types of content.

The most basic layers you’ll find in premium slider plugins include: Headings, Text, Images, Buttons and Videos (YouTube, Vimeo, and self-hosted).

Some premium and advanced sliders may also offer other types of content layers, such as: Icons, Lists, Captions, Image boxes (and image areas), Transitions, Progress bars, Counters (and circle counters), Audio, Text areas and iFrame.

The best way to fully understand how layers work is to see them in action. Check out the video below to see how layers work in the free version of Slider Slider 3.

Adding Animations and Effects to Sliders

You’re probably familiar with the default right to left slide background animation that many images slideshows use when transitioning through images. But what’s exciting about working with sliders is that there are many more awesome animations and effects you can use to add both bold and subtle effects to your website.

Background Animations

Whether you want to fade, rotate, zoom, or have your images metaphorically explode, there are dozens of different background animations you can use for transitions between each slide.

Layer Animations

Similar to background animations, layer animations enabled you to animate particular layers in your slider, such as the button animation below.

Text Animations

With text animations you can animate your words and bring text to life as a chain of lines, words, or characters.

Ken Burns Effect

Make your slides pop with this elegant zooming and panning Ken Burns effect, invented for film. A simple way to give your images the illusion of motion.

Parallax

Add depth to your sliders—or, at least, the illusion of it—with parallax. Parallax images move at different speeds and create an optical illusion of depth.

Animated shape divider

Add moving curves, clouds, and diagonal shapes to your sliders with an animated shape divider effect.

Particle effect

Stunning yet deceptively simple. Using the particle effect allows you to add moving shapes and lines, dots, triangles, and polygons that follow the cursor

Creating Sliders: Features and Functionality to Look Out for When Choosing a WordPress Slider Plugin

Now that you’ve got a basic understanding of the different types and behaviors of sliders, as well as layers, animations, and effects, it’s time to look at some of the advanced features you can expect to see in reputable WordPress slider plugins.

From different types of content and dynamic elements to performance and optimization capabilities, these are the features you should look out for when choosing a quality slider plugin.

Visual Editor

Every good slider plugin should come with a visual editor that allows you to design each individual slide, much like how you would with Photoshop and other image editing programs.

Visual editor allows you to drag-and-drop layers, change fonts, sizes, colors, add animations and effects, and generally manipulate the content in your slides to look exactly how you want.

Layers and Customization

Imagine if Photoshop didn’t have layers? It would be difficult to design and edit images, right? Surprisingly, many slider plugins don’t use layers. Without them, you’re severely limited in how you can design your plugins.

Layers allow you to create content-rich sliders, which might have various images, text, video, and other elements layered together to form one interactive slide.

When choosing a slider plugin, make sure it includes the most basic layers (headings, text, images, video, and buttons), as well as any advanced content you might need, such as icons, audio, lists, and counters.

Live Preview

Like any software, live preview allows you to quickly see every change you make in real-time. For example, after updating an image or adding a text layer or transition, you can click ‘Preview’ to quickly preview your changes and see what your slider looks like with all over your layers, animations and effects working together.

Dynamic Content

You aren’t limited to adding just static images, video, and text to your slides. Some slider plugins, like Smart Slider 3, allow you to populate slides with dynamic content, such as WordPress and Joomla blog posts, YouTube playlists, and even products from your WooCommerce site.

This means you can dynamically display content, such as your eCommerce store’s best-selling products, your latest blog posts, or even new video additions to your YouTube channel.

Page Builder Compatible

If you’ve built your site using a page builder, such as Elementor, Beaver Builder, Divi, Site Origin or WP Bakery Page Builder, be sure to check that any slider plugin you choose is compatible.

Responsive Design

Ensuring that your site design is responsive is crucial now that Google has moved to mobile-first indexing. So choose a slider plugin that provides responsive design out-of-the-box.

Some sliders, like Smart Slider 3, provide device-specific settings for desktop, tablet and mobile. This means your sliders will automatically adjust for different devices. You can choose to enable features like tilt and swipe, or simply turn off sliders for particular devices.

Support and Updates

Premium slider plugins should always come with priority support, so if you run into any issues you can get in touch for help. Support generally doesn’t come with free slider plugins, though you can use the WordPress Support Forums if you have any questions.

Keeping your slider plugin up-to-date is also important for security and performance, and so you can upgrade to receive new features.

Speed and Performance

There’s a common perception that sliders negatively impact website performance. Often, people add images to sliders that are too big or haven’t been optimized. So if a slider plugin further impacts performance, it’s a double whammy for page load speed.

It’s important that your slides load immediately but don’t slow down the loading of your pages, so look out for slider plugins that offer image optimization such as generating smaller images for tablet and mobile visitors and converting the images to WebP for faster load time. The ability to lazy load some of the images is another great feature to have. Both of these techniques will help your slides load quickly.

SEO-Friendly

When you’re adding different types of content such as images and video to your sliders, it makes sense to leverage it for SEO, right? So when choosing a slider plugin, make sure it’s been designed with SEO in mind and its HTML structure follow SEO best practice. This will ensure your individual slides—along with the alt text you have entered for your content—ranks in search.

Developer-Friendly

If you want even more control over the design of your slides, look for a slider plugin that’s developer-friendly and allows for custom code within slides, but also allows you to edit external files for customizations like animations and effects.

Conclusion

Now that you learned all there is to know about sliders and how they work with WordPress, you’re ready to start creating your own! As I mentioned above, there are some great free options, but I’d highly recommend starting out with Smart Slider 3, which you can download from WordPress.org.

Smart Slider 3 comes with loads of features and options (including everything mentioned in this article and more). Check out these stunning slider examples and download Smart Slider 3 for free to get started.

The post What is a Slider? The Ultimate Guide to WordPress Sliders appeared first on Smart Slider 3 — WordPress Plugin.

]]> https://smartslider3.com/blog/introducing-morph-and-distortion-animations/ Thu, 07 Oct 2021 06:00:41 +0000 https://smartslider3.com/?post_type=blog&p=42353 It’s never easy to create an amazing website that stands out from the crowd. You need eye-catching, user friendly design and some modern effects. The latest update of Smart Slider Pro is here to bring you some cool stuff. This time we’ve brought you two new groups of Background Animations. They’re called Morph and Distortion, […]

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]]> It’s never easy to create an amazing website that stands out from the crowd. You need eye-catching, user friendly design and some modern effects. The latest update of Smart Slider Pro is here to bring you some cool stuff. This time we’ve brought you two new groups of Background Animations. They’re called Morph and Distortion, and they give you a total of 12 new effects to use on your sliders. Let’s explore these new features together!

What’s a background animation?

Before we check the new effects, first let’s learn what a background animation is. The background animation is the kind of effect that you see when one image changes to another. This happens when you switch slides either by a control (such as an arrow) or using autoplay.

It’s worth noting that some background animations are not noticeable on background colors. It’s due to the way the animations work: they manipulate the background in a way that it’s hard to spot it on a solid color. The new Morph and Distortion animations are great examples of this. So, make sure you use them on images only.

What are Morph animations?

Morph animations magically transit one background image into another in an unconventional way. The transition is mind-blowing but very smooth, so it’s perfectly suitable for any modern websites.

What are Distortion animations?

Distortion animations are liquid-like transitions between images. You can create stunning glitch transitions made with WebGL to catch your visitors’ attention. Unlike the Morph animations, they affect the whole image simultaneously. Although they still look super modern, they’re a bit more fun looking.

Where to find the new animations?

The new animations are available in 3.5.1 of Smart Slider Pro. To take advantage of them make sure you update first! Once updated, select a slider and go to its Animations tab. Please note that background animations are only available in the Simple slider type.

Real Life Morph and Distortion animation examples

Every new Smart Slider feature comes with inspiring example sliders. There’s no difference with the Morph and Distortion animations either. To show the strength of the new effects and to inspire you, we’ve created a slider template. This time we’ve chosen a movie theme and we’re using the Distortion – Flow effect on the background images. What’s the result? Check the demo and find out!

Oh, and by the way, we revamped some old templates to use the new effect. Do you need more inspiration to use these new animations? Be sure to check these revamped Morph and Distortion templates, too!

One of the sliders we chose was the Cosmetics slider, which uses the Morph – Wave animation when you switch slides.

The Organic Food template takes advantage of the new Morph – Brush animation to create a stunning slide changing effect.

The Photo Story template’s most important part is its large and gorgeous images. We choose the Distortion – Storm animation to make the slider more stunning.

We wanted a more subtle animation for the Top 5 Products template, so we chose the Distortion – Mosaic effect. This effect looks absolutely ravishing on this modern full page slider!

Conclusion

The Morph and Distortion animations are amazing additions to Smart Slider. They’re cool and modern effects which will help you create more beautiful sliders than ever. The 4 Morph and 8 Distortion effects let you experiment and find the animation that suits your site the most. Start using the new effects today!

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]]> https://smartslider3.com/blog/top-10-features-of-smart-slider-3-pro/ Sun, 10 May 2020 11:37:19 +0000 https://smartslider3.com/?post_type=blog&p=18873 Smart Slider 3 is quickly becoming the go-to slider plugin for WordPress. With more than 500,000 active installs — including 20,000 new installs in just the past four weeks — there’s nothing stopping this plugin’s phenomenal growth. In fact, Smart Slider 3 is outpacing every other slider plugin at WordPress.org. So why is Smart Slider […]

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]]> Smart Slider 3 is quickly becoming the go-to slider plugin for WordPress. With more than 500,000 active installs — including 20,000 new installs in just the past four weeks — there’s nothing stopping this plugin’s phenomenal growth. In fact, Smart Slider 3 is outpacing every other slider plugin at WordPress.org.

So why is Smart Slider 3 so damn popular right now? If you’ve tried this user-friendly plugin, you know it’s super easy to get started creating a good-looking slider with minimal effort, no matter your skill level. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that Smart Slider 3 makes designing sliders fun!

And that’s just the free version of the plugin — when you upgrade to Smart Slider 3 Pro, you get 100+ professionally designed slides and templates, 16 layer types, dynamic generators, animations, and more. To bring you up to speed with what this intuitive plugin can do, let’s take a look at Smart Slider 3’s top 10 features.

1. Default and Absolute layers

There are two different visual ways in Smart Slider 3 to create content: using Default and Absolute layers. It’s these innovative editing options that set this plugin apart from the competition and help make it the easiest to use slider plugin for WordPress.

Working with Default layers is like working with a page builder. You can use columns and rows to quickly build your slides, and with a clean design that’s fully responsive.

Working with Absolute layers, you have the freedom to work with layers unobstructed, much like you would in Photoshop. You can place your layers anywhere you like and even position them on top of each other to create stunning sliders with dynamic effects.

2. Rich Layers

Imagine if Photoshop didn’t have layers. It would be difficult to design and edit images, right? Surprisingly, many slider plugins don’t offer layers, which severely limits what you can do with your slider designs.

Not Smart Slider 3, though — it’s the most advanced slider plugin when it comes to layers, boasting 21 different layers, which you can use to create a professional and good-looking layer slider.

3. Extensive Slide library

Whether you’re time poor, have no idea what you’re doing when it comes to design, or just need a kick-start with designing your slides, Smart Slider 3 Pro comes with a stack of beautifully designed templates that you can customize with your own content.

The Slide Library comes with 100+ pre-designed slides for everything from product sliders and hero headers to magazine layouts, and testimonials.

4. Impressive Template Collection

In addition to the extensive Slide Library, Smart Slider 3 Pro also has a huge collection of professionally designed slider templates, which you can also browse and import. The template collection includes customizable slider, block, and page templates.

Once you’ve imported a template, you can change the colors, fonts, layers and more to suit your website. If you’re new to Smart Slider 3 Pro, playing with the design of a demo template slider is a great way to learn how the plugin works — and what it’s capable of.

I highly recommend checking out the plugin’s collection of example sliders so you can get a feel for what you can build with Smart Slider 3 Pro.

5. Dynamic Generators

One of Smart Slider 3 Pro’s most useful features is its ability to pull in dynamic content from loads of different sources — 32 sources, in fact — including WordPress posts, WooCommerce products, YouTube, Dribbble, Pinterest and more.

How is this feature useful? Say you wanted to auto-populate your sliders with videos from your YouTube channel, images from your Dribbble portfolio, or photos from your Flickr account. Also you can create a Post slider or a Product slider, which show your latest post or product, and can update itself automatically. You could do all this with Smart Slider 3 Pro.

6. Animations and Effects

Sliders have evolved far beyond the simple image sliders and transitions that dominated websites 10 years ago. What’s exciting about working with sliders now is that there are awesome animations and effects you can use to add both bold and subtle elements to your site.

Here are some of the animations and effects you’ll find in Smart Slider 3 Pro:

Background Animations

Whether you want to fade, zoom, rotate or explode your slides, there are 70+ background animations you can use for the transitions between each slide.

Layer Animations

Similar to background animations, layer animations let you animate the individual layers of your slides which you can cheer up your slider.

Text Animations

With text animations, you can bring your words to life by animating lines, words, or individual characters. A split text animation on your heading layer, or the animated heading attracts the eye and catch the visitor’s attention.

Parallax Effect

Add depth to your sliders — or, at least, the illusion of it — with parallax effect. With parallax enabled, your slides will move at different speeds, creating an optical illusion of depth.

Animated Shape Divider

Add moving curves, clouds, and diagonal shapes to your sliders with the animated shape divider.

Ken Burns Effect

Make your sliders “pop” with this elegant zooming and panning Ken Burns effect, which was originally invented for film. It’s a simple way to give your static images the illusion of motion.

Particle Effect

This effect is stunning yet deceptively simple. The particle effect adds moving shapes and lines, dots, triangles, and polygons that follow the cursor.

7. Responsive Options

With Smart Slider 3 you can create responsive WordPress sliders, so you slider will automatically adjust for different devices. Even the free version of Smart Slider 3 is fully responsive and has a lot of device specific settings. You can set the font sizes to lower or bigger on each device, or set different padding or margins, and wrap after columns value.

Smart Slider 3 Pro features you more responsive options than most of slider plugins. You can define device specific slider sizes, and you can use a different slide background image for desktop, tablet or mobile.

8. Speed and performance

There’s a common misconception that sliders are resource-hungry and negatively impact site performance. While some sliders may well slow down your site, you can rest assured that Smart Slider 3 Pro won’t.

It comes with image optimization (you can optimize and preload images to improve your website’s loading speed), lazy loading and — impressively — script optimization, which boasts efficient code, asynchronous loading, and minification. These features alone are more than you’ll find in any other slider plugin.

9. Developer-Friendly

Smart Slider 3 Pro is intuitive enough for beginners to use, but is also packed with features for developers. In the Pro version you get access to a bunch of advanced options, giving you even more control over your slides.

10. Support and Updates

Last, but not least, one of the best features of Smart Slider 3 is the folks who build and support it. The team at Smart Slider 3 put their heart and soul into this plugin and it shows — from the regular updates to the friendly customer support, you can trust that when you buy this plugin, you’ll be well looked after.

The free version of Smart Slider 3 has a 4.9 out of 5-star rating at WordPress.org. When you scroll through the latest reviews, you can see how much people really love this plugin! When you buy the Pro version, you can be confident that you’ll get even better, faster support.

Conclusion

Smart Slider 3 Pro is the most feature-rich slider plugin for WordPress. But it’s more than just a slider plugin — it’s a visual builder that lets you create sliders, blocks, app showcases, and other page elements for a truly dynamic website.

If you want a slider plugin that’s feature-rich, user-friendly, and optimized for performance, Smart Slider 3 Pro is a popular and versatile option that’s worth checking out.

The post Top 10 Features of Smart Slider 3 Pro appeared first on Smart Slider 3 — WordPress Plugin.

]]> https://smartslider3.com/blog/particle-effect/ Thu, 07 May 2020 06:26:29 +0000 https://smartslider3.com/?post_type=blog&p=18363 Modern web designs have lots of cool effects. There are some old, but gold effects like the typewriter effect. There are effects copied from the video industry like the Ken Burns effect. And there are super cool effects which are game physics and motion graphics inspired. The particle effect might be the best example for […]

The post What is a Particle Effect and Why Should You Use It? appeared first on Smart Slider 3 — WordPress Plugin.

]]> Modern web designs have lots of cool effects. There are some old, but gold effects like the typewriter effect. There are effects copied from the video industry like the Ken Burns effect. And there are super cool effects which are game physics and motion graphics inspired. The particle effect might be the best example for this case.

What is the particle effect in web design?

Particle effect or particle system is a technique in web design, that uses a large number of tiny objects. These objects keep moving around on the site, creating a spectacular result. Particles can interact with each other such as connecting with a line when they get close enough.

Particles are usually circle shaped and really small. But it’s not uncommon to use other shapes, such as triangles, squares or other polygons. Particles can interact not only with each other, but also with the user. For instance, they can flee from the cursor, or connect themselves to it by a line.

How does particle effect work?

Particle effect works by creating many particles in a given area. These particles move continuously, usually in a random way, without stopping. It’s also possible to make the particles follow a given direction, for instance, move from top to bottom.

How to use the particle effect on WordPress?

The easiest way to use the particle effect on your WordPress site is using a plugin. For instance, the effect is available in Smart Slider 3 Pro, which is a great tool to create such decoration.

1. Download and install Smart Slider 3 Pro to your website
2. Create a new slider using Smart Slider 3
3. Select the Particle Effect at the Animation settings of the slider you just created

Here’s a quick video to show you where to find the effect:

What kind of particle effects are available in Smart Slider 3?

Smart Slider 3 allows you to choose from 9 different, cool looking particle effects. These effects are premade by us, but they have minor configuration options. For instance, you can change the color or line color, even the speed, but you can’t change the shape. If you need to use custom shapes, you can build your own effect and paste its code to the slider. But you can use this to create a snowing effect.

Why should you use the particle effect on your slider and website?

The particle effect is a modern web design technique. The best part of this effect is, that it’s not as common on websites as, for example, the parallax effect. This means you have a bigger chance to make a great first impression which can lead to more sales. Even if your site doesn’t sell anything, you can profit from such a unique effect. Cool effects like this make the site memorable for the visitor and they are more likely to come back.

The particle effect can enhance any kind of slider, let it be a simple, showcase or carousel type. Their subtle animation gives motion to the site, so it doesn’t feel static. Of course the particle technique looks stunning on any device, desktop, tablet and mobile alike.

Final thoughts

Particle effect is one of the key techniques modern web design has. It’s a simple but elegant effect, which offers many possibilities to use. What I like most in the particle technique is that it fits well with any type of website, unlike many other effects. The best websites out there already use it. Are you using it, too?

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The post What is a Particle Effect and Why Should You Use It? appeared first on Smart Slider 3 — WordPress Plugin.

]]> https://smartslider3.com/blog/layer-animation/ Sat, 02 May 2020 11:45:39 +0000 https://smartslider3.com/?post_type=blog&p=17197 Everyone loves fancy transitions on their website. A layer animation helps catch and keep the visitor’s attention for as long as possible. Having smooth, lightweight animations on pages has become a trend as people tend to remember images and moving things easier. When you create your slider, and put your layers on it, everything stands […]

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]]> Everyone loves fancy transitions on their website. A layer animation helps catch and keep the visitor’s attention for as long as possible. Having smooth, lightweight animations on pages has become a trend as people tend to remember images and moving things easier.

When you create your slider, and put your layers on it, everything stands still in their place. However, wouldn’t it be fancy if the layers moved? In Smart Slider 3 Pro you have the option to use layer animations on your slider. They can come in, loop, go out, repeat, so you can create even complex animations if you want. Read this article and learn everything about layer animations.

Importance of layer animations

Layer animation helps you create really amazing sliders, because the movement catches the visitors’ eye. A small animation on a layer can help the visitor to focus on it, it makes your site modern and makes your website come alive. In addition, because of the movement, the visitors read the text on the animated layer subconsciously.

It is also important to mention that you should be careful with the animations, but don’t take them to the extreme. You should keep the harmony in the slider, make sure that the animations aren’t disturbing. When each layer moves at the same time in a different way, it might backfire. Having to focus on a lot of things can be confusing. When it comes to animations, less can be more.

In Smart Slider 3 Pro you can animate all of your layers, you can create any kind of animation that you have imagined. Also, there are a lot of predefined animations to choose from, if you quickly want to have an animation on your layer. The best thing is that if you are done creating a complicated animation, you can copy it to your other layers as well.

Animation types

In Smart Slider you can choose from a lot of pre-set layer animations. There are basic animations like the fade or move, special animations which were built from more Keyframes, and the newest type is the reveal animation. Reveal animation is an elegant and modern effect which can reveal the layers. It animates a colored box in front of the actual layer, which attracts the eye.

You can set all the animations at the Layer window → Animation tab, just select the layer and set an incoming animation, a loop, or an outgoing animation. Also, there is an option to set an Event, and the animation will be triggered by that event like opening a popup. You can read more about them below.

Animations in Smart Slider 3

In Smart Slider 3 Pro you can’t only add an animation to your layers, you can use text animation too, such as the animated heading or the highlighted heading. Also, there is an option to set a main animation to your slider and use animations on your background. These animations are fancy, and there are a lot of pre-defined types available which you can choose from.

In layer animation

The most popular layer animation is the incoming animation. It introduces the layer so the visitor can see it when they need to. In layer animations usually start right after the background animations have finished, but this can be changed for each slider. This kind of animations were made to introduce the layer, for example, fading it in or moving it in from outside of the canvas.

Create mask for a layer animation

To have an even more splendid effect, you can use the mask to make the layer animation only happen within the layer. When this option is used, the content of the layer will only appear when it reaches the original position of the layer. In other words, only those parts of the layer will be visible which are inside the layer’s original position.

Loop layer animation

The loop animation keeps repeating itself until an out animation takes effect on the layer, or until the slide is changed. Using the Events you can put a loop animation (e.g. a pulsing effect) on your layer when the user hovers over it, and when the cursor is not above the layer anymore the animation will stop.

Out layer animation

In Smart Slider 3 Pro you can use outgoing animations, too. Usually, they play right after the in-animation has finished, but they can be played right before the slide-switching, and they can be triggered by any event. The out-animations are used to hide a layer on the current slide. For example, on the headphone slider the text that appears first is hidden using layer animations.

When you create a complex animation and use events to trigger them, you should use the repeatable option. This function can be also useful if you want to create for example a flashing effect, where layers appear then disappear after each other. Both the in- and out-animations have a repeatable option. And the out animation can be skipped per slider, if you don’t want to wait for every single out-animation to happen when you switch slides.

Create multiple layer animations

In Smart Slider 3 Pro you can build complex animations with using keyframes. You can create as many keyframes as you want, and use it after each other. The basic animations can have multiple keyframes, with different animations in them. For example, you can create an in-animation, the layer can fade in, move left, move right and rotate.

Layer animations work the way that enables you to put as many animations on one layer as you want with Keyframes. Also, we’ve made some predefined chain animations to help you have a fancy animation as fast as possible!

Managing the layer animation on the easy to use timeline

Every layer animation appears on a visual timeline, where the delay and duration can be changed. You can see the three layer animations with different colors. When the animation is clicked, it will open the layer window’s animation tab, and let you edit the selected animation. Pressing the space key will start the animations, so you can see a preview on how they will look.

The timeline has another great feature. It lets you copy and paste animations between different layers. For example, if you created a complex animation, you can quickly have it on different layers. So you don’t need to create the animations all over again, you can save time and effort.

Specify events for layer animations

People sometimes want more from layer animations, for example that the animation happens with an event. With Smart Slider 3 Pro you can handle the animations with events. There are a lot of predefined situations, such as when the visitor clicks or the mouse enters the layer area. These events are perfect for creating simple events, which can be triggered if the user interacts with the slider. For example you can show layers when the user hovers on the slide, and hide them if their mouse leaves the slide area.

With default events you can cover a lot of use cases, but you can create your own custom event as well. Any specific layer animation can be triggered by any number of events, so you can create a popup for example, which can be trigger by clicking on the layer.

It is important to mention that there are no events without layer animation. Using events you can make layers appear and disappear on mouse over, mouse out or mouse click.

Two positions for your layers

In Smart Slider your layers can have Default or Absolute position. Working with Default layers is like using a page builder. Additionally, you can work fast with great responsive behavior. Absolute layers allow free editing, but its much more complex to achieve a good responsive look.

However, Absolute layers can be very useful if you build a complex animation, because these layers let you put a layer above or below the others. For example using Absolute layers you can create a popup, or you can create small moving elements like in the City example.

Final Thoughts

With a nice animation you can cheer up your website and you can raise the visitors’ attention. In Smart Slider 3 Pro you can use layer animations on every slider type, so in WordPress carousels or image sliders as well, and you can achieve what you’ve imagined.

Take your layer animations to the next level with the easy to use animation builder. Create unique and fascinating animations choosing a basic or a reveal animation. Don’t forget: a moving design element will always outperform any static one when it comes to grabbing your users’ attention.

The post Use Beautiful Layer Animations in Smart Slider 3 Pro appeared first on Smart Slider 3 — WordPress Plugin.

]]> https://smartslider3.com/blog/wordpress-photography/ Wed, 15 Apr 2020 06:45:05 +0000 https://smartslider3.com/?post_type=blog&p=24601 Many professional photographers think that a website is not necessary in their work and the social media platforms are enough to promote their business. But actually do you need a website if you are a photographer? Why to choose WordPress? Which plugins are useful on a website? Check out the article and you will encounter […]

The post Everything You Should Know to Create a WordPress Photography Website appeared first on Smart Slider 3 — WordPress Plugin.

]]> Many professional photographers think that a website is not necessary in their work and the social media platforms are enough to promote their business. But actually do you need a website if you are a photographer? Why to choose WordPress? Which plugins are useful on a website? Check out the article and you will encounter the most popular themes and plugins, and you can read tips on how you can build your own WordPress photography website.

Jump to a section quickly

💻 Do you need a website if you are a photographer?
📷 The best free WordPress themes for photographers
🎓 Which plugins do you need on your photography website?
🖼️ How to display photos on your website?
⚡ Useful effects what you can use on your photography page
💡 Tips & tricks for creating a Photography website

Do you need a website if you are a photographer?

The answer is simply yes. Sometimes social media aren’t enough and a photography site can take your business even to a professional level. People can find you, discover your images on your site or read reviews about your customers, so everything is in one place. OK, then maybe you are thinking of how you can build a website if you don’t have any coding skills? The solution is simple: use a website creation tool, like WordPress.

Why to choose WordPress?

WordPress is an open source website creation tool which you can easily use even if you aren’t a developer. I could list many advantages why to choose WordPress, but now let’s see some of the most convincing facts:

• You can use a page builder to create your website easily with drag & drop
• You don’t need to code
• Search engines can find you and your business
• You can create your website yourself, you don’t need to pay for a developer
• You can choose thousands of plugins which can be useful, for example to create a contact form or a slider
• There are a lot of tutorials for WordPress in the web, where you can learn a lot
• You can easily upload a photo, add a category and display it as you want

The best free WordPress themes for photographers

To start building a great website you’ll need a theme which you can easily work with and which you can customize as you need and create a responsive design. Which theme can you choose for creating a WordPress photography website? I’ve collected 5 great themes which I can suggest choosing even if you are a beginner or an expert WordPress user. Let’s see them!

OceanWP

Live Preview

OceanWP is a free WordPress theme which works well with the best page builders like Elementor or Divi. It is fully responsive and you can change what you want. OceanWP has an Ocean Extra plugin which offers you ready to use templates. If you import a template, you can fully customize it with your page builder, but you can use the theme without a page builder, too.

The theme has settings to everything in the WordPress theme settings. You can set all font types, you can customize the menu, the style, or the typography but you can create a custom header as well. The theme offers paid extensions which can be useful on a WordPress photography website. With them you can show your latest posts in a slider, and there is also an option to create a photo grid layout with your portfolio images.

Neve

Live Preview

Neve is a popular free theme in the WordPress theme directory with 100.000+ active installs. It features a nice hero header for displaying images, which can be a great first impression for your visitors. Neve works well with Elementor, Brizy, Beaver Builder, but you don’t need a page builder plugin if you don’t like them, because it works very well with Gutenberg as well.

Astra

Live Preview

Astra is a simple theme and has a lot of customization options in which you can personalize your own website. This theme has simple editing options, and you can find every setting in one place. The theme has also pre-built templates which you can choose from. Just choose a WordPress photography theme, change the content, and use it easily on your website. It can be a great help at the theme designing and website building.

Shapely

Live Preview

Shapely is a great theme with 60.000 active installs. Shapely offers you a demo content which you can fully customize at the WordPress customizer settings. The front page stays from sections which you can change one by one as you want. The hero header is a full size image with CTA buttons, and has a fixed background which has a parallax effect. Then you can set your own portfolio section and you can add more sections if you want. You don’t need a page builder to use it, all settings can be done at the WordPress menu.

Ashe

Live Preview

Ashe is a free WordPress theme with 50.000 active installs and 5-star rating, you can download it from the WordPress theme directory. Ashe gives you more options to set the layout what you prefer. This theme can be a good choice if you want to use a theme where you can easily set everything in one place without any page builders or other plugins. But Ashe has a Pro version as well which offers you more features that can be useful at your WordPress Photography website.

Which plugins do you need on your photography website?

Plugins can add awesome functionality to your site without needing to code. They have special functions which can substitute custom coding. Each plugin has their own function, but they can be more complex, for example a page builder can be used in a lot of cases instead of using plugins.

Choosing a good plugin isn’t always simple. Everyone has different needs, so sometimes it is hard to find the best plugin for your website.

What I can suggest before you choose a plugin:

• Check the active installs
• Check the ratings of the plugin
• Read some reviews of different users
• And check the change log which can show that the developers take care of the plugin.

Page Builder

If you don’t know any programming languages, WordPress is your choice with a free page builder plugin with which you can build up your website with drag & drop. Elementor is one of the best page builder plugins which has a free and pro version as well. You can easily build your pages, and you can also use widgets like a gallery from your images. But there are more powerful page builders besides Elementor: Divi, or Beaver Builder which have their own strengths.

Gallery

Galleries aren’t new, but they are important in a WordPress photography website. But how do you know which gallery plugin you should choose? If you work with a page builder, you can choose from more gallery widgets. But if you don’t use a page builder, then you can search for galleries on the WordPress repository.

What I can highlight is the Elementor’s gallery widget. This can be useful if you use Elementor, but all the page builders have gallery widget which you can use on your site. In the basic Elementor gallery you can insert your photos, set the image size, the column, and you can open your images in a lightbox. If you have Elementor Pro then you will be able to use another gallery widget where you can set the layout, the columns, the spacing, the overlay, and you can also add an accordion to your gallery which can be useful if you have more photos in different categories.

Slider plugin

If you have a photography website you may need a slider plugin to display your photos in an attractive way. A slider can be used in more cases: it can be a simple slideshow, a carousel, or a portfolio slider, but you can create a thumbnail gallery style or a full-page slider, too.

Smart Slider 3 is the best slider plugin in the WordPress repository. It is totally free, but there is a Pro version as well which has more features and effects. In Smart Slider 3 you can use layers, so you can put a text or a button on your slider, and you can also create a dynamically changing slider from your posts. With Smart Slider 3 you have an option to create a landing page, so you can display your sliders under each other where you can mix the slider types.

Caching plugin

Caching plugins can help to decrease the loading time of your WordPress photography website. Speed can be a critical part of every website, and if you work with images, it is much more important. If your site loads slowly you can lose your visitors, so you should take care of the performance.

WP Rocket is one of the best caching plugins. It makes your website load fast,it is simple, user friendly, and compatible with the most themes and plugins. It is a premium WordPress caching plugin with three payment plans offered. The plugin offers a simple user interface, and makes your site really fast. You should set it properly, but they have a lot of documentation which can help you where to start.

SEO plugin

SEO is an important factor in a website, if you want the search engines and people to find your website. Don’t be afraid to use an SEO plugin which helps you to use a keyword correctly, and gives you advice on what you should change.

Yoast SEO is the most popular SEO plugin which you can use for free. It lets you easily add SEO titles to your post and pages, you can define a keyword, and also you can write a meta description which will appear below your title in Google. Yoast SEO automatically generates a sitemap which helps search engines to find your WordPress photography website.

Contact form

If you have a website, it is important to add the opportunity for the visitors to contact you. You can add your email address, but if you want to make it more professional, then you can use a contact form plugin. Contact forms has a lot of extra features which you can use, and they are reliable, so you will get the email.

I can highlight Contact form 7 from the contact form plugins because it is a really great and easy to use plugin with 5 Million active installs. Even a beginner can customize their own form, you don’t need any coding skills.

How to display photos on your website?

You can encounter several ways to display images on Photography websites. Image grids, fullscreen images, sliders, gallery templates. They can cheer up your website, and can show your images in different views. But how can you display them? It depends on 2 things: how much images you have and which mode you prefer.

In the past few years there have been some popular trends of how you can display your images. Let’s see them!

Slider

With a slider you can display your images and this is a popular way to showcase your work. But it is also important to always give control to your visitor. If you have an autoplaying slider, make sure that your visitors can stop it and check your images more carefully. A slider can be full width or full page, but you can use a boxed layout which will be as big as the container where the slider is. You can feature images and use it as a header, too.

Photo grid

Photo grid is the most used type of displaying your photos. You can display predefined number of photos, and can add a “more button” to your other photos, or if your design lets you, you can set an infinite scroll for your images. But it is useful to set a category, and the visitors can choose which category they want to see.

Fullscreen images

With a fullscreen image you can show your photo in a good quality, and call the visitors’ and potential customers’ attention. You can use a full screen photo at your homepage, where you can put CTAs which you can navigate to useful parts of your WordPress photography blog.

Carousel

If you have a lot of images, the best way is if you try to save space on your website. Carousels can show more slides next to one another at the same time. It can be useful to show your portfolio in a small place.

Thumbnail gallery

A thumbnail gallery can show a small preview of your photos, so you can check their preview, and if you want to show it in a bigger size, then you can just click on it.

Masonry

Nowadays you can encounter the popular masonry style on a lot of websites. This card design is similar to the photo grid, it lets you display a large number of photos that users can see. In some designs you can add a short title, brief description and a CTA below your image, which helps to navigate the visitor to the page of the actual image.

Useful effects what you can use on your photography page

Animations and effects can cheer up your website and you can grab your visitors’ attention with them. An animation can help to focus on something, like an image or a CTA button. On a photography page you can encounter lots of effects, let’s see the best ones.

Ken burns: The Ken burns effect is a popular zooming effect, it turns a still image into a motion picture. It looks good in a hero image or a header, it grabs the visitors attention, and makes your website live.

Parallax: You can encounter the parallax effect on more and more WordPress photography websites. The effect creates the illusion of depth when you scroll on the page. It makes a great user experience, and cheers up your website, and makes it special.

Change image on hover: A hover effect can show your visitor that something will happen if they click on the image. This can be an actual CTA, but it can be just a simple information which appears to hover like a description of the image.

Before & After: Before & after effect is useful if you want to visualise that something changed before and after a given state.

Open image in lightbox: On most of the websites you can encounter photo galleries where you can enlarge the images in a lightbox. Lightboxes can help to focus on one image, and you can check the images in a bigger size.

Tips & tricks for creating a photography website

If you are thinking of creating a new website for your photos, check out these few tips & tricks, which can be useful for you, and which can make your website more powerful.

1. Always fill the image alt tags

Image alt tags help the search engines to index your images. It is important, because if you fill the alt tag correctly, the visitors can find your website easier.

2. Use readable image filenames

You should take care of the filename of the photo because of SEO reasons as the alt tags. A relevant name is much better than a generic one. For example, if you add an image which shows a golden retriever, don’t use the generic name like DSC1234.jpg because the search engines can’t find it. Instead of that, you can add a name like Golden_Retriever.jpg, and with that you can increase the chance that visitors will find your images.

3. How to put watermark on your images?

If you want to display your images, maybe you want to protect them. The best is if you watermark them. That can be done one by one with your photo editor, but you can use a plugin for that.

4. Provide options to purchase your photos

If you want to sell your images, and you have a WordPress website, you can use an ecommerce plugin like Woocommerce where you can easily set up the prices and the payment.

5. Resize your images before uploading

If you upload your original photo, you give access to your photo for the whole web. In addition, they are too big, and can slow down your website’s loading speed. Resize your images, and then upload them into your WordPress media library.

6. Don’t ignore the updates

Always take care of the updates at a plugin or at your theme, because they are important for security reasons, and the update can have bug fixes, too.

Final Thoughts

Creating a website isn’t simple, but a good choice CMS like WordPress, and great plugins and themes can make the whole building process easier. You can make your own work much simpler if you plan, what you would like to achieve. Check out a few WordPress Photography pages, collect ideas, watch tutorial videos, and then you will see it isn’t as hard as you thought for the first time.

The post Everything You Should Know to Create a WordPress Photography Website appeared first on Smart Slider 3 — WordPress Plugin.

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