Why should you use sliders?

After all these negative arguments, you might be wondering why you should use a slider? Firstly, if you choose the right slider plugin you won’t have to worry about the points above. A good slider plugin won’t create serious speed problems for you, and won’t create problems for you. Also, make sure you design your slider carefully to fit the purpose you need it for.

Secondly, sliders have many advantages, and can be used for almost any purpose. Additionally, they fit into any kind of website. I’ve collected some of the most important reasons to use a slider:

1. Sliders save space

This is especially true for product or post sliders, where you can display many items next to each other. As a result, the visitors can get a glimpse of your products or posts. Additionally, they don’t have to scroll too much, or go to other pages and risk leaving your site.

2. Sliders are interactive

Sliders which aren’t auto advancing require the visitor to take action. They need to click on a button to see more slides. So, an interactive slider helps engage users the moment they arrive at your website.

3. Sliders are visually appealing

While they’re more than just eye candies, sliders are design elements. This means they let you get creative and create innovative designs and amaze your visitors. This can result in them spending more time on your site.

4. Sliders make content stand out

Sliders are visual tools, and they can easily grab the visitor’s attention. As a result, they’re perfect for showcasing new content in an attractive manner.

How to create sliders in 2024?

To create good sliders in 2024 make sure you keep the above mentioned points in mind, and do your best to create sliders they don’t apply to. In other words, make sure your slider is SEO friendly, responsive and accessible. Also, make sure you create an eye-catching design that looks nice. Finally, don’t forget to optimize your slider for speed.

Most of these aspects depend on the slider plugin you choose to create your slider. Before settling on a certain plugin, make sure it can create sliders that will benefit your site.

What kind of sliders can you find on modern websites?

Modern websites call for modern sliders. But what does this actually mean? Use sliders with a purpose, and make them valuable assets for your site. Don’t use them only to have something on your page that looks fancy. Sliders in 2024 are more than eye candies that take up valuable space.

Here are some examples on what kind of ways you can use sliders in 2024:

Product sliders

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Product sliders are the most common slider types on modern websites. Basically, you can find at least one on every ecommerce website. Sliders can showcase a bunch of products, without taking up too much space. Typically a product slider displays 3 to 6 slides next to each other. It displays an image of the product, its price, category and a CTA button to check its details. Of course, it can display extra information, like the product’s rating.

Post Slider

Live PreviewBloggers love post sliders. A post slider is a good way to feature the most recent, or most popular articles anywhere on their site. As a result, these articles can get more views, because the visitors can find them more easily.

Portfolio slider

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Showcasing your portfolio in a creative and unique way can help you get more work. There are many photographers, designers and developers out there, and clients can have a hard time choosing. A creative portfolio makes you stand out of the crowd and get more clients. Additionally, it tells your future clients they’ll stand out, too, if they work with you.

Logo slider

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Usually you can find a logo slider on websites which sell products or services. They use the logo slider to showcase some of the big name customers they work with. To make it simple, logo sliders are marketing tools, to help increase sales. After all, if someone is good enough for a big company such as Amazon, it’s good enough for you as well.

Image gallery with thumbnails

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A thumbnail gallery is another popular way to use a slider. In this case the slider acts as a gallery, rather than an actual slider. It helps to display your images in an engaging way. The thumbnails are great for two reasons. Firstly, you can use them for navigation. Secondly, they indicate how many images you can see. The most common way to display the image gallery is to put the thumbnails to the bottom of the slider. But you can also find thumbnail galleries where the images are on the left or right side.

Testimonial slider

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Seeing satisfied customers of a product or service can help convince hesitant customers to make a purchase. So, they can help you generate revenue. Using a slider is the best way to display testimonials on your site. The potential customers can browse them in a comfortable way, so make sure you take advantage of it!

Storytelling slider

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Every slider tells a story. But interactive sliders, where the users can click on buttons to advance create a memorable experience and visitors will likely come back later.

Video sliders

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Video sliders generally don’t contain static images, just videos. You can use them to display tutorials, courses or even introduce your products. They’re one of the best demonstrating tools at your disposal, and it’s worth using it on your site.

Photography slider

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If you’re a photographer, you must have lots of images you want to show on your site. Good news: sliders are great tools to showcase pictures, which makes them perfect for photographers. You can create a nice image gallery, add your captions and let your visitors enjoy your photos.

Conclusion

Are sliders back? Yes they are! In fact, they’ve never left, they just evolved to fit better into modern websites. They have purpose, and they’re not just fancy eye candies anymore. Sliders in 2024 have a solid goal: to help your website. Will you let them do so?

The post Do People Still Use Sliders in 2024? appeared first on Smart Slider 3 — WordPress Plugin.

]]> https://smartslider3.com/blog/10-faqs-on-wordpress-sliders-everything-you-need-to-know/ Thu, 06 Jul 2023 09:17:20 +0000 https://smartslider3.com/?post_type=blog&p=52919 We’re thrilled to delve into the world of WordPress sliders! They can be a game-changer if you want to boost your website with dynamic content. Additionally, we’ll address the most frequently asked questions regarding WordPress sliders giving you the information you need to make wise choices. However, there’s still more! We have you covered whether […]

The post 10+ FAQs on WordPress Sliders: Everything You Need to Know appeared first on Smart Slider 3 — WordPress Plugin.

]]> We’re thrilled to delve into the world of WordPress sliders! They can be a game-changer if you want to boost your website with dynamic content. Additionally, we’ll address the most frequently asked questions regarding WordPress sliders giving you the information you need to make wise choices.

However, there’s still more! We have you covered whether you are an inexperienced or a seasoned user. This article will support you with the necessary information to get the most out of WordPress sliders, from understanding the basics of sliders to improving their performance and customization. So let’s get started and look at the solutions to your most pressing questions concerning WordPress sliders.

📚 Table of contents

What is a WordPress Slider?
Should I Use Sliders On My Website?
Do Sliders Negatively Affect SEO?
Do Sliders Make Websites Slow?
What is the Easiest WordPress Slider?
What is the Best Free Slider for WordPress?
How Do I Create a Slider in WordPress?
What Size Should Slider Images Be in WordPress?
How Do I Make a Full-Width Slider in WordPress?
How Do I Make a Slider Autoplay in WordPress?
How Do I Make a Responsive Slider in WordPress?
How Do I Create a Post Slider?
How Do I Make a Slider in Elementor?
How Do I Create a Product Slider in WordPress?
Conclusion

What is a WordPress Slider?

Are you brand new to the WordPress slider community? We’ve got you, so don’t worry!

WordPress sliders, sometimes referred to as carousels or slideshows, are dynamic elements of a website that can present a variety of content, including media content in a slideshow format. It often takes up a primary spot on the homepage, drawing the users’ attention, while exhibiting its content in a visually appealing and engaging way.

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What is the Purpose of a Slider?

A WordPress slider’s main goal is to captivate visitors and offer them an alluring experience. Sliders are frequently used to:

1. • Showcase portfolio items

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1. • Make significant announcements

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1. • Highlight featured products

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1. • Display client testimonials

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They provide a dynamic and interactive feature that can improve the aesthetics and usability of your website. You can efficiently share information, pique your visitor’s interest, and advertise certain content or services by using a slider. Visitors can navigate among all types of content without overcrowding the page with material thanks to sliders. They help you display many bits of content in a limited space.

Should I Use Sliders On My Website?

You could be weighing whether you should add a WordPress slider to your website, now that we have a better understanding of what they are. Sliders can be intriguing, but it’s important to take into consideration the benefits and drawbacks before choosing one.

What are the Benefits of Using a Slider?

• Visual Appeal: Slider’s eye-catching content can quickly capture users’ attention and help establish a lasting first impression.
• Highlight Multiple Content: Sliders make it simple for visitors to browse through a variety of options by allowing you to display different pieces of content or products in a small space.
• Promotional Opportunities: Sliders are a great way to draw attention to special deals, brand-new items, or significant announcements.
• Enchanted User Experience: Including interactive sliders in your website, adds a visually appealing and dynamic outlook, additionally enhancing the overall user experience.

What are the Disadvantages of Using a Slider?

• User Distraction: Sliders that change slides automatically can divert users’ attention away from the primary message or call-to-action, which might have an impact on their focus and engagement. So in this case make sure to always allow the visitor to stop the autoplay on demand.
• Page Load: Sliders with huge image files can slow down page loads and degrade the user experience. We’ll explore this concept more later on and give you tips on how to avoid it.
• Accessibility Problems: Many users choose not to follow the useful recommendations given to make their sliders accessible. This causes it to have accessibility problems. So they either choose to drop the slider or just simply not make their website accessible.

Think of your website’s unique goals, target audience, and content before employing sliders. Sliders are a very useful tool if you have eye-catching visuals or a variety of products to highlight. However, firstly you should always consider the needs and goals of it for a moment.

Do Sliders Negatively Affect SEO?

It makes sense that you are wondering whether WordPress sliders are affecting SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Let’s answer some typical concerns and clarify the connection between sliders and SEO.

• Content Accessibility: A possible risk is search engines’ ability to correctly index and comprehend the content within sliders. It’s crucial to make sure the text content within a slider is crawlable. For improved accessibility, use a slider plugin that enables you to add alt text to your images, and lets you structure your content with different H tags. However, a good slider plugin also offers the opportunity to add text as paragraphs as well. In addition, your slider should have a good HTML structure.

 

• Page Load Times: A key element of SEO is how quickly your page loads. You must optimize your slider to prevent them from negatively affecting the speed of the entire website. Use effective image compression methods, reduce the picture sizes, and if your slider plugin supports it, activate lazy loading. Additionally, pick a performance-focused slider plugin, like Smart Slider 3, that’s lightweight and well-coded.
• Mobile Responsiveness: Search engines prioritize mobile-friendly websites because they offer a better user experience. So make sure the slider plugin you use has choices for responsive design, and test your sliders on a variety of devices to make sure they appear correctly.
• User Engagement: Although not directly associated with sliders, user engagement metrics, like click-through rates, time on page, and bounce rates can nonetheless have an indirect influence on the SEO of your website. These can be positively impacted by engaging sliders that grab users’ attention and promote interaction. They can even inform search engines that your content is important and relevant.

Don’t let SEO concerns stop you from including sliders on your website. You can have a positive effect on your SEO efforts by implementing the best practices for accessibility, performance optimization, mobile friendliness, and unique content. Additionally, make sure to choose a slider plugin that has all the above-mentioned options for better accessibility.

Do Sliders Make Websites Slow?

The possible impact on website performance while utilizing WordPress sliders is a common concern. Let’s explore this and learn more about how to include sliders into your website with the best performance possible.

• Image Optimization: Images in sliders are commonly the main cause of longer page loads. To avoid this issue, optimize your slider images by resizing them and compressing them.

 

• Lazy Loading: Implementing lazy loading for your slider can greatly enhance the functionality of your website. It allows for faster initial page loads by only loading images within the slider when they enter the users’ viewport. Lazy loading features are included in several slider plugins, including Smart Slider 3.
• Reduce Animations and Effects: Although animations and transition effects can improve the aesthetic attractiveness of your sliders, too many or complex animations can have an adverse effect on the speed of your website. To ensure seamless and quick transitions on and between the slides choose animations that are lighter and simpler.
• Performance-Optimized Slider Plugin: Select a slider plugin that has been optimized for performance, because not all slider plugins are made equally in terms of speed. Choose a performance-optimized, lightweight, and well-coded plugin, like Smart Slider 3. Such plugins are created with the intention of prioritizing speed and reducing resource usage without sacrificing functionality.

Remember, optimizing numerous features, including sliders, contributes to the overall performance of your website. Utilize tools like Google PageSpeed Insights to continuously evaluate the performance of your website and spot areas for development.

Don’t let your fear of website slowdown stop you from utilizing sliders to their full potential. You can profit from sliders without losing website speed by adopting optimization strategies like image optimization, lazy loading, and starting to use a performance-focused plugin, like Smart Slider 3.

What is the Easiest WordPress Slider?

Finding the easiest WordPress slider plugin will save you time and trouble, whether you’re new to WordPress or just searching for a user-friendly slider solution. Fortunately, there are some out there that put emphasis on simplicity without sacrificing functionality.

Smart Sldier 3 stands out as a superb option in terms of usability. It has a very user-friendly and straightforward interface, making it available to users of all skill levels. Without coding experience or other technical skills, you can easily design and edit sliders using its drag-and-drop builder.

With real-time previews, Smart Slider 3 offers a fluid editing process so you can see your changes right away. The user-friendly interface makes it easy to add and arrange slides, edit animations, include multimedia elements, and choose transition effects. To kickstart your slider-making process, you can also use the side library and the pre-designed templates.

Additionally, you can easily include sliders in your current website design, thanks to Smart Slider 3’s compatibility with well-known page builders like Elementor, Divi, Brizy, WPBAkery, and Avada Builder.

What is the Best Free Slider for WordPress?

You’ll be happy to know that there are several impressive solutions if you are looking for a free slider plugin for your WordPress website. However, Smart Sldier 3 stands out as a strong free slider plugin among them. It provides an astonishing amount of functions and customization options without charging you a thing.

Here’s why it’s on the top of the free slider plugins for WordPress:

1. Feature-rich: Smart Slider 3 offers a wide range of features equivalent to those found in premium slider plugins. You can get access to:
   • 5 different layers types and default and absolute position them
   • Image optimization
   • Page builder support
   • Dynamic content
   • Adjustable controls of your slider
   • 9 smooth background animations with customization options
2. Intuitive Interface: Smart Slider 3’s design makes it simple for both beginner and experienced users to build sliders with ease. You can easily organize slides and other layers using the drag-and-drop builder, and the real-time preview lets you watch the changes take effect as you edit your sliders.
3. Responsiveness: A slider must be responsive and mobile-friendly in order to function properly, given the growing popularity of mobile usage. Your sliders will be entirely responsive and mobile-friendly thanks to Smart Slider 3. It ensures the best viewing experience on a variety of screen sizes.
4. Template Library: Smart Slider 3 offers a variety of pre-designed templates to get you started with creating sliders. You can save time and work by using one of these templates, which provides a number of aesthetics for different sectors.
5. Compatibility: As it was already mentioned above, Smart Slider 3 works in perfect harmony with well-known page builders. Because of this, you can build your website using sliders without worrying about compatibility difficulties or conflicts.

Create engaging sliders without going overboard with your money to improve your website’s aesthetics and user engagement.

How Do I Create a Slider in WordPress?

With the help of the Smart Slider 3 plugin, WordPress makes it simple to create siders. Let’s go through the detailed instructions to get you started creating your own slider:

• Step 1: Install and Activate Smart Slider 3
  Go to “Plugins” in your WordPress dashboard and select “Add New”.
  Find “Smart Slider 3 “ by searching for it, then click “Install Now” next to the plugin.
  Once the plugin has been installed, click “Activate”.

 

• Step 2: Access Smart Slider 3
  Now, the WordPress sidebar has added the Smart Sldier 3 menu. To access the plugin’s dashboard click on it.

 

• Step 3: Create a New Slider
  Click the “New Project” button on the Smart Slider 3 dashboard.
  Choose whether you want to start from scratch or use a template.
  If you choose to build your own, then select the slider type you would like to use (block, simple slider, carousel, or showcase).

 

• Step 4: Customize your Slider
  You can add and arrange your slides. To add slides select the “Add Slide” button. Add content on each slide, change the settings, and add animations and effects as desired.
• Step 5: Configure Slider Settings
  On the Slider settings page, you can adjust and customize your slider wholly like, autoplay, animation, and controls. In addition, based on the layout of your website, modify the slider.
• Step 6: Publish the Slider
  Click the “Save” button when you are done with customizing the slider.
  There are different publishing possibilities available in Smart Slider 3. You can choose to embed the slider using a shortcode or a widget, or directly insert it into a page or post using the Gutenberg editor or page builder.
• Step 7: Check and Verify
  To make sure that your slider displays and operates as intended, preview it.
  To guarantee responsiveness and the best possible user experience, test your slider on a variety of screen sizes.

What Size Should Slider Images Be in WordPress?

Choosing the right size for your WordPress sliders’ images is essential, to ensure that they blend smoothly into the style of your website and offer the best viewing experience to your visitors.

Let’s look at some recommendations that can help you in choosing the right size for your sliders:

• Aspect Ratio: It is advised to match the slider’s aspect ratio to your website’s general layout and appearance. Choose an aspect ratio that works with the dimensions of your website’s content space.
• Proper Images: The size of the images should match the slider they are placed in. So don’t attempt to fit a 3000 px wide image within a 1200 px wide slider. The same goes for putting smaller images in bigger sliders.
• Full Width, Boxed, and Full Page: Choose whether you want your slider to be contained within a certain content area (boxed), cover the entire width of the browser window (full width), or fill in the browser’s width and height (full page). While the boxed layout can provide a more focused and under-control display, the other two can produce an experience that is more visually striking.
• Responsive Desing: Your slider must be capable of adjusting to various screen sizes. Therefore, select a slider plugin with responsive design choices, such as Smart Slider 3.
• Page Load Times: Even though they are aesthetically pleasing, sliders that require huge image files can considerably slow down page loads. Maintaining the balance between aesthetic appeal and performance is important. If you can, use jpg photos rather than png ones since they load more quickly. A nice slider image should not exceed 500 kb in size.
• Testing and Previewing: To make sure that your sliders are displayed as intended across various devices, it’s crucial to preview them. It’s important to ensure that your sliders adapt properly and maintain their aesthetic appeal.

How Do I Get an Image to Fit a Screen?

You can select how an image will fit the screen when you set it as a background image. You can choose one of five fill modes in Smart Slider 3, for each of your slides. Let’s check out how they work!

• Fill: This is the default option. If necessary, it crops the images so that it fits the whole slider.
• Fit: The entire image is seen, without cropping. The areas where the image can’t reach the slider are left unfilled.
• Blur fit: It doesn’t crop the image. However, it also doesn’t leave any blank areas in the slider. Actually, it fills them with the original image’s blurred form.
• Stretch: Here the image is stretched to fill the slider without being cropped. The visuals frequently become distorted as a result. Use with caution!
• Center: Contrary to popular perception, this setting won’t center the slider. It only places the background image there in its original size. As a result, this mode loses its responsive behavior.

Check out this video for an example of each mode in action:

How Do I Make a Full-Width Slider in WordPress?

A full-width slider in WordPress enables you to make a visually striking effect by leveraging the complete width of the browser window. Creating a full-width slider is simple with the help of Smart Slider 3. So let’s begin:

• Step 1: Install and Activate Smart Slider 3
  Follow the instructions mentioned previously in this post to install and activate the Smart Slider 3 plugin, if you haven’t yet.
• Step 2: Create a New Project
  From the WordPress dashboard select Smart Slider 3. Click on the “New Project” button, then choose the “Full width” layout.

 

• Step 3: Slider Settings
  In the Slider Editor select the Size tab. To make sure the slider fills the complete width of the browser window turn on the “Force Full Width” option. This option forces the slider to go outside of its container and makes it as wide as your screen. However, it has limitations, so it won’t work in every case.
• Step 4: Customize Your Slides
  Use the “Add Slide” button to add slides to your slider. Then add layers and animations to make it your own. Use the drag-and-drop editor to organize it in a manner you like.
• Step 5: Additional Settings
  Explore the wide range of settings Smart Slider 3 offers.
• Step 6: Preview and Test
  Always previous and test before moving on to the publishing process. Ensure your slider looks how you intended it to look. Test its responsiveness, and make adjustments to achieve the best results.
• Step 7: Publish Your Slider
  After you saved all the changes on your slider, you can publish it in your preferred way by choosing one of the publishing options Smart Slider 3 offers.

How Do I Make a Slider Autoplay in WordPress?

Even in the free version of Smart Slider 3, you can make autoplaying sliders, but the Pro version gives you additional features. Let’s go through each step:

• Step 1: Choose a Slider
  On the WordPress dashboard locate Smart Slider 3 and select it. To edit the slider, click on the one you would like to add autoplay to.
• Step 2: Enable Autoplay
  Go to the “Autoplay” tab inside the sider editor, then toggle the “Autoplay” option to enable it.

 

• Step 3: Adjust Autoplay Preferences
  Additional options will show up after you enable autoplay. In accordance with your preferences, you can adjust the configuration options.
• Step 4: Customize Autoplay (Optional)
  Advanced settings are available in Smart Sldier 3 to customize the autoplay further. Explore them, and additionally, you can change the options for controls, pause/play buttons, and indicators.
• Step 5: Preview and Test
  To check that the slider begins autoplaying in accordance with the selected parameters, preview your slider. In addition, test on various devices and screens.
• Step 6: Save and Publish
  When you are happy with the autoplay settings, click the “Save” button to keep your modifications. After this, you can publish it in your preferred way.

How Do I Make a Responsive Slider in WordPress?

A responsive slider makes sure that it adapts nicely to all screen sizes and devices, giving your visitors the best possible viewing experience. Luckily, making a responsive slider in WordPress is simple with Smart Slider 3, which is fully responsive. Besides, there are some features you can easily customize before proceeding.

• Font Sizes: To change the font size of your content just use the Text Scale option. The fact that this is a device-specific setting means that you don’t need to worry about changing the font size on other devices, which is one of the numerous advantages of using it.
• Hide Layers On Devices: Anybody can experience having their desktop layers look bad on mobile view. With Smart Slider, you can hide whatever layer you want on any device, so there’s no need to worry. Use the “Hide On” feature in the layer window to get to this option. It can be quite beneficial to be able to hide your layers individually.
• Hide Slides On Devices: If you are using the Pro version, hiding your slides on different devices can be another great option to improve the responsiveness of your sliders.
• Hide Sliders On Devices: Or just simply disable the slider, which will hide everything on the selected device.
• Controls: Your controls can also be hidden since some of them are simpler to use on desktops but on smaller devices, they seem to be more challenging.

How Do I Create a Post Slider?

Making thumbnail sliders for simple navigation is one of Smart Slider 3’s outstanding capabilities. If you want to highlight a number of pages or posts, you can even go one step further and build a WordPress carousel with the help of it.

Although there are many great slider plugins available, let me explain why Smart Slider 3 is unique. You have complete control over the design and can easily make a free full-width slider that looks good on all screens. Additionally, it has more functionality than many other groundbreaking slider plugins.

However, there’s still more! The Dynamic Slider feature is a great tool in Smart Slider 3. You can use this tool to build slides from your WordPress posts that update anytime you make changes to the original post itself. So the maintenance will be simple.

You can make as many dynamic slides as you wish. On top of that, you can create a custom post type slider using Smart Slider 3. This offers full access to the featured image, textual content, URL, post title, categories, and tags of your posts. What’s more, you can add custom layers to design and represent these slides as you wish.

Therefore, Smart Slider 3 is the way to go without any doubt, if you are looking for a user-friendly plugin with advanced customization options, that goes above and beyond the essentials. Give it a try and see how beautiful sliders and carousels can make your website come to life.

How Do You Make a Dynamic Slider?

Now we can move on to the actual process of creating a dynamically changing slider. So follow along for this 5-step guide to create your own:

1. Create a Dynamic Slide

You can add a dynamic slide either to an already-created slider or a new one. When you add new content to your source, the slide will automatically update. You should configure the generator and decide how many dynamic slides you want to have in the slider.

2. Set Up the Generator

There are several sources to pick from. If you have the Pro version of Smart Slider 3, then you can select from 20 sources in WordPress and 27 sources in Joomla to build a post slider from your Joomla articles and WordPress posts.

3. Create Your Own Slider

You can design your own slider if you want to make one that’s distinctive. Additionally, you can import predefined-slider examples in Smart Slider 3 to use as dynamic slides. Simply copy the layout and paste it into your dynamic slide to complete the task.
You can learn more about how to utilize the demo slider in your generator by reading our documentation.

4. Insert Variable

Set variables if you want your content to change dynamically. Where variables are not used, a static layer will be present.

5. Publish the Slider

Your slider can now be published, such as a shortcode, or turned into a Gutenberg block. Your slider will also show up on the frontend and automatically refresh.

How Do I Make a Slider in Elementor?

As you may know in Elemnetor you can create simple sliders. However, there are only 3 layers you can add to it: a heading, text, and a button layer. In addition, they have fixed places, so there’s not much room for creativity. This might be the right choice for some websites. But, if you would like to create a more advanced slider where you would like to add additional content, you need to look for a slider plugin that works well with Elementor.

Let’s look at how you can make it happen with Smart Slider 3:

1. Install and Activate Smart Slider 3
2. Create a new slider and add slides
3. Customize each slide to match your own preferences
4. Create a new page or edit an existing one with Elementor
5. Drag and drop the Smart Slider 3 widget wherever you would like it to be
6. Select your slider
7. Save and Publish

You don’t need to start from scratch, browse the template library to find the most suitable slider for your project.

 

As you can see using Smart Slider 3 with Elementor couldn’t be easier. Just create your preferred slider, add the Smart Slider 3 widget to Elementor, and select the one you’ve created. It’s effortless, time-saving, and fun.

How Do I Create a Product Slider in WordPress?

Smart Slider 3 is a great tool for building special and functional product sliders for your online store in WordPress. In addition, you don’t have to worry about losing mobile visitors, since Smart Slider will take care of it for you.

With this plugin, you are offered a wide range of options for how to effectively display your products. To show your items from various perspectives or highlight their unique features you can add additional image layers. It also helps you with adding specific information about each product using the heading and text layers. Besides, you can design call-to-action buttons that send your visitors to the category or product pages for additional information.

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The fact that you can select from the pre-made templates or create your own slider without any coding experience is pretty fantastic. There are no restrictions on how many sliders you can make.

You can draw attention to your top-selling items, or special deals. Moreover, it’s very simple to add a call-to-action button that will persuade visitors to take action. Both the Carousel and Showcase slider types offer beautiful layouts and perfect responsiveness, depending on what your preferences are. In contrast to the Showcase type, the Carousel type maintains the same number of visible slides regardless of the screen size.

In short, if you would like to create captivating product sliders that easily catch the attention of your audience and help you achieve your goals, then give Smart Slider 3 a go.

Engaging Product Slider Examples

Now, let’s look at some stunning examples of different product sliders, to help you get started with your next project.

Product Carousel

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To present your products in an engaging and responsive manner, you can utilize the WooCommerce carousel slider. The amazing thing about it is that it shows numerous products slides together, rather than just one slide at a time, which creates an aesthetically pleasing arrangement. The slider and the slide widths are completely adjustable, and you can even decide how many products you would like to show at once. With this fantastic tool, making a responsive carousel is quite simple.

Full-Width Product Carousel

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A really cool slider that’s ideal for presenting your products is the Full-Width Product Carousel. What’s so eye-catching about this is that it introduces some pretty creative concepts, like creating a background with a complementary color to further highlight your items. Additionally, it has space for special slides, including those that advertise offers or encourages your visitors to sign up to your newsletter. They can view several slides at once with this carousel type, allowing them to see more of what you have to offer. It’s an excellent strategy for getting their attention.

Full Page Product Slider

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You don’t see the Full-page product slider every day, do you? It’s a wonderful idea to create a full-page product slider to make yourself stand out from the competition. With its cool animations and smooth navigation. The Top 5 Product template takes it to the next level. And the best thing, though? You have plenty of room to include product descriptions and give your buyers all the information they need. This strategy is fantastic for getting their attention and leaving a positive impact.

Showcase Product Slider

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The Showcase slider type stands out because it shows several slides at once, giving your visitors more to look at. Bet here’s the cool part: by making the main slide larger than the others, it always focuses all the attention on it. The centered slide gets all the attention thanks to this innovative design, while also showcasing the remaining slides. It’s a great technique to draw attention to your content and keep people interested. Try it out to see for yourself!

Conclusion

Congrats! Now you have a firm understanding of WordPress sliders and how they can advance your website. Throughout this post, we’ve answered the most frequently asked questions regarding sliders, including their advantages and effect on SEO as well as their functionality and customizability possibilities.

By utilizing sliders, you can attract users to your WordPress site, highlight key content, and significantly impact your visitors. Sliders offer an effective approach to engaging your audience and successfully delivering your message, regardless of whether you are a blogger, designer, developer, or business owner.

And Smart Slider 3 is the real deal when it comes to selecting the best slider plugin. It’s the most outstanding option for building gorgeous sliders that blend with your website flawlessly. All thanks to its user-friendly interface, rich customization options, and compatibility with well-known page builders.

Why wait then? Utilize Smart Slider 3, and discover the full potential sliders can bring to your website when you make the right choices. Get ready to engage your visitors with aesthetically pleasing sliders.

We hope this post has given you insightful information and useful advice for your adventure with sliders. Feel free to get in touch with us through our support system if you have any additional questions or need assistance. We are here to help you make your sliders shine!

Thank you for joining us on this slider adventure. Stay tuned for more exciting content and helpful tips on WordPress and web design. Happy sliding!

The post 10+ FAQs on WordPress Sliders: Everything You Need to Know appeared first on Smart Slider 3 — WordPress Plugin.

]]> https://smartslider3.com/blog/9-inspiring-wordpress-carousel-examples/ Mon, 06 Sep 2021 12:06:47 +0000 https://smartslider3.com/?post_type=blog&p=41986 There are many ways to call slider-like elements. You’ve probably heard the most common names by now: slider, carousel, slideshow and showcase. Many people simply call everything “slider”, that looks like a slider. Some distinguish sliders based on how they look. For instance, they call the element that displays one slide, one image at a […]

The post 9 Inspiring WordPress Carousel Examples appeared first on Smart Slider 3 — WordPress Plugin.

]]> There are many ways to call slider-like elements. You’ve probably heard the most common names by now: slider, carousel, slideshow and showcase. Many people simply call everything “slider”, that looks like a slider. Some distinguish sliders based on how they look. For instance, they call the element that displays one slide, one image at a time a slider. They call those sliders that display more slides next to each other, a carousel or a showcase. In this article we’re focusing on the carousel, which displays more slides at once. I’ve also collected some beautiful WordPress carousel examples for you to check out.

What is a WordPress Carousel?

A WordPress carousel refers to the carousels which are created in WordPress. Generally, people use a plugin to create them. In fact, there are many plugins you can use to create a slider or carousel. More importantly, there are many free options you can choose.

Choosing a free slider plugin for your site is not easy. Make sure you pick the one that has: many active installs, good rating and good support. The Free version of Smart Slider has more than 800.000 active installations and 4.9 of 5 rating on WordPress.org. Additionally, even the free version is well supported. Although it’s worth noting to create the WordPress carousel examples you’ll see below, you need Smart Slider Pro.

Why do people use WordPress carousels?

Carousels, regardless of what they’re called, save space. They also help make the visitors’ life easier. For example, by saving them the effort and time they’d have to spend scrolling. Additionally, carousels make it easy to compare similar elements, such as two products.

What’s more, carousels let you be creative. They help you create visually stunning designs to amaze your visitors. So, web developers, designers and clients like them. However, just like any element, carousels should be used with a purpose. There are many purposes for people to create carousels to display various kinds of content. Some of the most common types are:

• Image Carousel. Displays images with, or without caption.
• Post Carousel. Displays latest, most popular or selected list of articles.
• Product Carousel. Displays products, typically from WooCommerce to showcase them and to increase sales.
• Logo Carousel. Displays the logo of sponsors or companies the author has worked with.

9 Inspiring WordPress Carousel Examples

Do you want to create a cool WordPress Carousel to enrich your site, but don’t know where to start? I’ve got great news for you. I’ve collected 9 beautiful WordPress carousel examples you can create for your website. Let’s check them out!

1. Full Width Product Carousel

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Generally, every slide in a product slider looks the same, only their content differs. In other words, they have the same colors, and their content is in the same order. If you want to stand out of the crowd you can mix different looking slides into your slider. For example, if you have more product categories, you can create a slider that shows 3 items from each. Then between them you can add a slide, that’s not about the product. For example, it can be a slide that prompts the visitor to check out the other products in the category. Or, use it to advertise a current or upcoming discount.

2. Product Carousel

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The Product Carousel template looks modern as it uses pastel colors. It features a product image, and another one on mouse enter. Below the product image, visitors can see the name, category and price of the product. As it’s a full width slider, it’s perfect for using it as your shop’s hero.

3. Testimonial Carousel

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Displaying customer testimonials is important for any business. Customers want to make sure they choose the best product, service and company to work with. So, they like to know how satisfied others are with your product or services. A carousel is a great way to display the testimonials, as it allows organizing them.

4. Post Slider Carousel

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This carousel offers you a cool way to showcase your latest posts. You can use it to display the featured image, title, publication date, author and tags of your blog posts.

5. Boxed Product Carousel

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Another cool carousel to display your products in a modern way. Product sliders typically display a picture of the product. This doesn’t only give a visual clue about the item, but also helps raise attention. When you create a product slider, make sure you also display the name, category and price of the product.

6. Logo Carousel

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Most visitors can recognize the logos of large companies. This makes it easy for them to see the big name clients your company worked with. Seeing these logos gives reassurance: if a well-known brand works with you, you’re doing a good job. So, they’ll want to do business with you, too. So logo sliders and testimonials can be used for similar purposes.

7. Post Carousel

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There are many ways to create a post carousel. You can use its featured image as a background and place its details on top. But you can also put the image above, below or next to the textual content. As a result, the visitors can view the images uninterruptedly. For example, on this carousel, the category, title, excerpt and read more button are on the left. The image itself is on the right side.

8. Squarespace carousel

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What makes Squarespace’s carousel interesting is its animation. It’s like there’s a box moving around, that covers different parts of the images. The movement grabs the attention of any visitor and they’ll stop to check it out. It makes the whole carousel look unique and creative which visitors will appreciate.

9. Playersroom carousel

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Playersroom is another example of a carousel that looks cool because of its effects. If you open the site and look at the carousel, it doesn’t seem special. But if you move your mouse over an image, it displays a text which describes what product you see. It’s a cool way of making the carousel interactive.

Conclusion

Don’t be afraid to use a carousel on your site! Carousels, and any other type of sliders are great design elements and will enrich your site. Additionally, they save space, look great and make your site more interesting to your visitors. Let these cool WordPress Carousel examples inspire you to create something awesome!

The post 9 Inspiring WordPress Carousel Examples appeared first on Smart Slider 3 — WordPress Plugin.

]]> https://smartslider3.com/blog/dynamic-slider/ Tue, 19 May 2020 06:30:17 +0000 https://smartslider3.com/?post_type=blog&p=21154 Do you run a WordPress website that is constantly publishing new content or selling new products? A dynamic slider might be just the design element you need to help you save time and ensure your content is always fresh for your site visitors. If you’ve been thinking about adding a dynamic slider to your WordPress […]

The post How to Create Stunning Dynamic Sliders in WordPress appeared first on Smart Slider 3 — WordPress Plugin.

]]> Do you run a WordPress website that is constantly publishing new content or selling new products? A dynamic slider might be just the design element you need to help you save time and ensure your content is always fresh for your site visitors.

If you’ve been thinking about adding a dynamic slider to your WordPress site, this post is for you. We’ll look at how you can add one to your site with the Smart Slider 3 plugin, along with examples to inspire you.

What is a Dynamic Slider?

A dynamic slider is a type of slider that automatically pulls in content from a particular source, such as a YouTube channel, WordPress blog, WooCommerce store, and more. For example, If you run a travel blog, you might want to display your latest blog posts on your homepage. With a dynamic slider, you can choose to pull in content from your WordPress site and display a slideshow of your latest posts — all without having to touch jQuery, HTML, JS or CSS.

Similarly, a photographer might want to dynamically display photos pulled from a specific folder, and a WooCommerce store owner might want to display a carousel of products on sale.

For example, with Smart Slider 3 you can generate dynamic content from a range of different sources, including:

• WordPress web pages, posts, and custom post types
• WooCommerce products
• The Events Calendar
• Facebook
• YouTube
• Vimeo
• RSS

Dynamic sliders are just that—dynamic. That means you only have to create your slider once with a WordPress plugin and the content displayed will always be automatically updated for you. You can set and forget. It also means you can focus on publishing great content or finding the best products for your online store without having to worry about updating your slider.

4 Impressive Examples of Dynamic Sliders

Let’s take a look at some examples of dynamic sliders to inspire your next project.

1. Dynamic Post Slider

This kind of dynamic slider lets you display your latest WordPress posts using your featured images as the background thumbnail. When you choose to dynamically generate content from your WordPress blog or Joomla articles, it means when a visitor land on your site the slider will automatically display your latest posts. The first slide will show your newest post. That means you can focus on publishing great content without having to worry about manually updating your slider.

2. Dynamic Image Slider

Dynamic sliders are ideal for photographers, designers, and creatives who have image-heavy websites. With a dynamic slider, you can select a specific folder in the slide settings as the source of images for your slider. That means when you add new images or remove some, your slider will automatically update to pull only images that are saved in the folder.

3. WooCommerce Product Slider

Dynamic product carousels are a popular design element used by ecommerce sites because they let you display multiple product items in a confined space. For example, Amazon users several different sliders to display every product on its homepage. With Smart Slider 3, you can create dynamic sliders that automatically update product sliders with items from your WooCommerce store. Best of all, your slider will look and work great on mobile devices, ensuring shoppers can easily swipe through your products.

4. YouTube Slider

A YouTube slider is a great way to make a visual impact on your visitors with a video player from your YouTube channel. What’s great about dynamically generating content from YouTube is that you don’t need to upload video to your website — you can host it on YouTube and pull it directly from your account. All you need to do is to copy your video’s link or the video ID, and in Smart Slider 3 you can easily create a nice looking, fully responsive YouTube slider for free.

How to Create a Dynamic Slider with Smart Slider 3

Creating a dynamically changing slider is easy with Smart Slider 3. Just follow this 5-step guide and create your own dynamic slideshow.

1. Create a dynamic slide

If you have an existing slider or you’ve created a new one, you can add a dynamic slide to them. This slide will automatically refresh if your source has a new content. You should set the number of how many dynamic slides you want to display in the slider, and set up the generator.

2. Set up your generator

You can choose from a lot of sources. In the free version of Smart Slider 3 you can create a Post slider from your WordPress posts or Joomla articles but if you have the Pro version, you can choose from 20 sources in WordPress and 27 sources in Joomla.

3. Design your slider

If you want to create a unique slider, now you can create your own design. Also in Smart Slider 3, you can import more predefined slider examples which you can use in your dynamic slide. All you need is to copy the layout and paste it into your dynamic slide.

4. Insert variable

If you want to have dynamically changing content, you should set variables. Where you don’t use variables, you will have a static layer.

5. Publish the slider

Finally, you can publish your slider, use its shortcode or create a Gutenberg block. And your slider will appear in the front end, and it will automatically refresh.

Wrapping Up

When you want to create a slider that features your latest content, you can’t go wrong with a dynamic slider plugin. Best of all, they’re really easy to implement with Smart Slider 3. All you need to do is select your dynamic generator source and use the provided shortcode to add your slider to your site.

I hope this guide has helped you learn more about dynamic sliders. If you have any questions about how to create a responsive slider that generates content dynamically with Smart Slider 3, leave a comment below!

The post How to Create Stunning Dynamic Sliders in WordPress appeared first on Smart Slider 3 — WordPress Plugin.

]]> https://smartslider3.com/blog/post-slider/ Tue, 05 May 2020 12:30:42 +0000 https://smartslider3.com/?post_type=blog&p=17813 Post Sliders are very useful and effective parts of your website. They show all the recent and trending posts to catch the visitors’ attention, and they encourage your visitors to spend more time on your blog. A nice looking Post Slider can be a great addition to every WordPress site. Have you thought of creating […]

The post Enrich your Blog with a Post Slider appeared first on Smart Slider 3 — WordPress Plugin.

]]> Post Sliders are very useful and effective parts of your website. They show all the recent and trending posts to catch the visitors’ attention, and they encourage your visitors to spend more time on your blog. A nice looking Post Slider can be a great addition to every WordPress site.

Have you thought of creating a Post Slider? Smart Slider 3 is the best choice to create one: it is free, fully customizable and responsive. Read the article and start creating your beautiful slider!

What is a Post Slider?

With a Post Slider you can show a part of your post in your slider like the title, the featured image, a short description and a button which navigates you directly to the post. With a slider you can grab your visitors’ attention and you can collect your posts into one place as well. It’s up to you what you want to show: the latest post, a post in a certain category, or a post by custom fields.

It’s nice if a post slider updates itself automatically so you don’t have to make the changes yourself. For any serious blogger, it’s highly recommended to use a Post Slider to enrich their blog.

A long time ago WordPress was only a blogging platform, but today it’s the most popular multipurpose CMS. There are still huge amount of blog sites using WordPress, because it’s easy to install, learn and use, and it has all the features a blogger needs to have a nice and content rich blog. Despite how great the core features are, it’s worth mentioning how easy it is to extend them. There are various plugins which are easy to install so you can get more features for your site. For instance, there are plugins which help you create a WordPress Slider.

With Smart Slider 3 you can easily set up a dynamic slider, and you can create your Post Slider with a few clicks.

Why is Smart Slider 3 the best tool to create a Post Slider?

Smart Slider 3 is an easy to use WordPress plugin, it is user friendly and fully customizable. It’s the perfect choice for creating simple image sliders which look great on any site. For easy navigation you can create a thumbnail slider, and besides that, you can create even a WordPress carousel. If you have pages or posts, and you would like to highlight them in a slider, this plugin is the best choice for you.

If you searched in the WP plugins directory earlier, you may have found a lot of slider plugins. Why should you choose Smart Slider 3? Because with Smart Slider 3 you can set up your layout, you can create a free full width slider, it is fully responsive, and has more features than some advanced post slider plugins.

Smart Slider 3 has a layer based slide building system, you can simply build your own layer slider. This system makes it easy to manage your content and create a fantastic look. The actual building experience is simple and it feels like using a page builder. You can build amazing content sliders in minutes and tell your story the way you want to. You can customize every layer, change their font size and family, color, background or what you want.

Create Dynamically Changing Slider

If this wasn’t enough, Smart Slider 3 has yet another amazing feature, the Dynamic Slide Generator. This feature allows you to create slides from your WordPress posts, which will dynamically change. This means that content of each slide comes from your posts, so there is no duplicated content, and if you make any changes in the post content, the slider will follow it.

Of course, you can create unlimited number of dynamic slide generators and specify the number of posts for each. By the way, Smart Slider 3 can create a custom post type slider as well. You have access to all content of your post: the featured image, the actual content, the URL, the post title, the categories, the tags, and you can create any layers to show them.

How to Create a WordPress Post Slider with Smart Slider 3?

You can create your own Post Slider already in the free version of Smart Slider 3. All you need is to create a dynamic slide, set the number how many slides you want to appear in the slider, and set up the generator.

A post slider can be useful if you would like to feature some posts and show the latest with the selected category. In the free version you can display posts by filter or by an ID. The Pro version has more opportunities, you can create dynamic sliders from custom post types as well.

After you have set up your dynamic post generator, you can replace the layers with variables, which will automatically refresh. You can use a lot of variables like the title or the date, also you can limit the showing characters. This limitation can be useful at the descriptions, and each slide will have a same length text on them.

Use a Slider Example in your Dynamic Slider

In Smart Slider 3 you can choose from more predefined slider examples which you can use in your dynamic sliders. All you need is to copy the layout, paste it into your dynamic slide and replace the layers with variables.

Why to use a Post Slider on your Page?

• You can create your Post Slider for free. What’s even more, the free version of Smart Slider 3 allows you to create unlimited number of unique sliders. Give it a try!
• You can catch the visitors’ attention. Use it as a homepage slider, put a call to action button on it, and navigate to your post.
• The content can dynamically change. You create it once, and if you create a new post, your slider will refresh automatically.
• Highlight certain content. You can show your latest post in recognizable place.
• It does not take up much space. There can be more posts on one slider which you can save space with.

Final Thoughts

Post sliders aren’t limited only to WordPress, you can create a Joomla article slider as well. Creating a slider from your articles isn’t the only dynamic functionality of Smart Slider 3. In the Pro version you can choose from a lot of generator types, you can create a product slider from your WooCommerce products, display your upcoming events, or show your latest Facebook post.

The post Enrich your Blog with a Post Slider appeared first on Smart Slider 3 — WordPress Plugin.

]]> https://smartslider3.com/blog/news-slider/ Fri, 10 Apr 2020 10:00:03 +0000 https://smartslider3.com/?post_type=blog&p=20050 If you run a news website or online magazine, or you simply publish new content on a regular basis, one of the best ways you can display your latest content is with a news slider. A news slider lets you maximize space when you’ve got limited room to display breaking news above the fold. Even […]

The post 7 News Slider Designs to Inspire Your Next Web Design Project appeared first on Smart Slider 3 — WordPress Plugin.

]]> If you run a news website or online magazine, or you simply publish new content on a regular basis, one of the best ways you can display your latest content is with a news slider.

A news slider lets you maximize space when you’ve got limited room to display breaking news above the fold. Even better, modern post sliders can automatically generate dynamic content as it’s published so your news slider will always feature your latest articles.

In this post, we’ll explore what news sliders are, benefits and features to look out for in a slider plugin, along with plenty of examples to inspire your own news slider.

What is a News Slider?

A news slider is a type of slider or carousel designed to showcase news, articles, or blog posts. Usually, content sliders will feature three or more articles. Each slide will include a featured image and title, which you can click to read more.

Modern sliders have the ability to generate dynamic content. This means that when you publish a new post on your WordPress site, your news slider will automatically update to include your latest post. This is a great feature if you want to ensure your homepage is always up-to-date with fresh content without the need to manually update carousels.

With Smart Slider 3, for example, you can easily set up a dynamic magazine slider that automatically pulls in content from your latest post. That means you can focus on publishing great content without having to worry about updating your slider.

What are the Benefits of News Sliders?

News sliders are a useful tool for publishers, not to mention a design tool you’ll often see across news and magazine websites. The benefits include:

• Dynamic content – The biggest benefit of news sliders is the ability to showcase dynamically generated content. This means your magazine slider will always feature fresh content from your WordPress site, and you won’t have to manually update it.
• Maximize space – Just like a real-life broadsheet newspaper, there isn’t much room above the fold when it comes to websites. With a news slider, you can showcase your top stories in the most space-saving, efficient way possible.
• Help readers focus – Magazine websites can get pretty cluttered when there are so many articles to read. A news slider lets you display 1-3 articles at a time so you can help reader focus on your most important stories.
• Appealing visuals – Images naturally complement news stories because readers want to see the action!
• Clear calls-to-action – With clear CTA buttons on your slides, you can direct readers to click-through to read your articles in full.

What Features Do News Sliders Have?

Surprisingly, the most popular news slider solutions involve coding jQuery plugins or cobbling together solutions with AJAX, HTML and CSS. While these solutions might be viable options for developers, there are several features that you’ll only find in modern slider tools like Smart Slider 3:

• Dynamic content – Whether you want to automatically display your latest news items or articles from an RSS feed, you can do it with a news slider.
• Post sliders – Showcase your latest posts from your blog, including custom post types.
• SEO-friendly – If you choose to use Smart Slider 3, any text you add to your slide layers will be search engine crawlable.
• Accessible – Modern slider tools like Smart Slider 3 meet the latest (WCAG) 2.0 requirements, ensuring your news slider is accessible for anyone.
• Responsive – It’s important to have a responsive slider that looks great on any screen, including mobile devices and fullscreen on desktops.
• Customizable – With Smart Slider 3, you can completely customize your news slider, including the size of your slide, the placement of images and text, and even the background, colors, and meta information.

7 Examples of News Sliders

Let’s take a look at some examples of multi-use news sliders to inspire you.

1. Post Slider Carousel

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This beautiful news slider design lets you display three dynamically generated WordPress articles at a time. Readers can scroll left or right to see more. The text overlays provide title, date, author, description, and category information, with a slight blue underneath that helps the words “pop.”

2. Post Carousel

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This simple post carousel features brief descriptions together with the title so you can get a nice summary of the article before clicking through to read the full post. This carousel design lets you sit two posts next to each other with eye-catching images. The dot navigation underneath lets readers know how many sliders there are to scroll through.

3. Full-width Post Slider

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This stunning full-width slider design is ideal for sites that share travel-based news items. The full-width background lets you display images in full (JPEGs, PNGs, GIFs, etc), while a break-out box lets you display a title, description and CTA to read more.

4. WordPress Carousel Post Slider

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This simple, responsive design looks great on tablets — readers can easily swipe left and right to view other slides. The thumbnail images, categories, titles, and descriptions provide readers with information about the news items.

5. Magazine Slider

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A magazine slider is a popular way to show your featured news. With that layout you can display more news with the group result setting on one slide at a time. You can easily put the featured image, the category, the post title, and the author of your 4 latest news. But if you would like to show other values, you can choose from a lot of variables.

6. Post Slider Showcase

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Showcase your articles and grab your visitors’ attention to your magazine website! At a showcase slider you can show multiple slides together. The active slide is in the middle, but you can display the previous and the next slides as well. If you click on the non-active slides, the slider switches to that slide so the visitor can check its content. This is a nice and convenient way to encourage the visitor to check more news.

7. Carousel Divider

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A post slider in a carousel is a great opportunity to cheer up your website. The shape divider gives a movement, and the colorful sections make your slider come alive. Feature the important news with this carousel and use it on your magazine homepage.

Wrapping Up

No matter what kind of news content you publish on your site, a news slider can help you display it in a highly visual and easy to access way. What’s more, you can showcase your latest articles items above the fold efficiently, ensuring that readers don’t miss any breaking news.

With Smart Slider 3, you can create responsive news sliders that pull in dynamic content from your WordPress or Joomla site, or even from an RSS feed. That means your post slider will automatically update every time you publish a new article on your site.

Do you have a news slider on your site? If you have any questions about using news sliders, let us know in the comments below!

The post 7 News Slider Designs to Inspire Your Next Web Design Project appeared first on Smart Slider 3 — WordPress Plugin.

]]> https://smartslider3.com/blog/wpbakery-slider/ Wed, 09 Oct 2019 06:00:56 +0000 https://smartslider3.com/?post_type=blog&p=20647 WPBakery Page Builder is the best-selling plugin on CodeCanyon and has been for many years now for good reason: it adds simple drag and drop functionality to any WordPress theme. Although WPBakery is packed with useful features, including dozens of predefined layouts and design elements, there are still some areas where it can be enhanced […]

The post Smart Slider 3 and WPBakery Page Builder appeared first on Smart Slider 3 — WordPress Plugin.

]]> WPBakery Page Builder is the best-selling plugin on CodeCanyon and has been for many years now for good reason: it adds simple drag and drop functionality to any WordPress theme.

Although WPBakery is packed with useful features, including dozens of predefined layouts and design elements, there are still some areas where it can be enhanced with third party plugins. Creating WPBakery sliders is one example of this.

So in this guide, we’ll explore how you can create a beautiful WPBakery slider for your WordPress site with minimal effort using WPBakery Page Builder and Smart Slider 3.

What is WPBakery Page Builder?

There’s been a lot of confusion in recent months since the original Visual Composer plugin available on CodeCanyon was renamed “WPBakery Page Builder for WordPress.”

Here’s a video that explains this confusing name change:

I hope that clears things up for you! In this post, we’re going to focus on the latest version of the WPBakery Page Builder for WordPress plugin.

What Makes WPBakery Page Builder So Great?

The beauty of WPBakery Page Builder is that it works with any WordPress theme. All you need to do is install and activate the WPBakery Page Builder plugin on your site and you’ll instantly have access to a ton of awesome design elements and layouts for creating beautiful pages with easy.

What makes the WPBakery Page Builder for WordPress plugin stand out are two things: its drag and drop functionality, and the ability to edit and style your pages on both the backend and the frontend of your site. This means you can preview your changes in real-time.

There are 40 content elements you can add to any page, which are split into four categories: content (e.g. text blocks, buttons, accordions, video background, rows, columns), social (e.g. Facebook Like, Pinterest), and structure (e.g. Raw HTML, Raw JS). You can also add insert the default WordPress widgets (e.g. search, recent comments, recent posts).

You might be wondering how to add sliders to your site with WPBakery Page Builder? Under the “Content” tab, you can choose “Posts Slider” to add a slider to your site that shows your latest WordPress posts.

It’s a useful element, but as you’re about to see, thanks to the support of third party plugins like Smart Slider 3, you can create stunning sliders that take WPBakery Page Builder to the next level.

Creating a WordPress Slider with WPBakery Page Builder

WPBakery Page Builder is a premium plugin, which you can purchase from CodeCanyon for $46, or directly from the WPBakery website for $45. You can try it for free using WPBakery’s text drive demo site.

Once you’ve installed and activated the plugin, you can choose to customize your site on the backend or frontend of your site. When you create a new page, you’ll see the WPBakery Page Builder button below the page title.

For this example, we’ll look at how to add a posts slider to your site using the WPBakery Page Builder’s frontend editor. This feature allows you to display a slider on your site that pulls in content from you latest posts or pages. Feature images will be used in your slides.

First, select the “+” icon in the top-left of the page. It will reveal the full list of elements. Find “Posts Slider” and add element.

A modal will appear where you can customize the settings for your posts slider. Give it a name and choose from one of three slider types: flex slider face, flex slider slider, and nivo slider.

You can also choose from several options:

• Number of slides
• How many seconds to auto rotate images
• To display posts or pages
• To display a description
• To output the post/page title
• To link to a post, bigger image, custom links, or no link
• Thumbnail size
• Specific post/page IDs,
• To display specific categories
• To order slides
• To sort order
• Advanced options for CSS

The options are fairly basic as far as creating sliders go, which is great if you just want a very simple slider for displaying your latest blog posts. Here’s what my final slider looks like:

Unfortunately, you can’t create image sliders or carousels with WPBakery, or create more complex sliders with layers, text, buttons, videos and more. For more advanced customizations, you can use a third party plugin like Smart Slider 3 to boost the existing functionality of WPBakery.

Smart Slider 3 is a great choice for integration with WPBakery as it adds an element directly to the page builder so you can create a WPBakery slider while editing your page.

Using WPBakery Slider and Smart Slider 3 Together

Smart Slider 3 has integration with WPBakery Page Builder and the two plugins work well together. After you have created your slider in Smart Slider 3 and you are ready to publish it, you can use the shortcode of the slider or create a WPBakery element.

Let’s see how you can publish your slider with WPBakery.

1. Add new WPBakery element

Go to the page where you want to add your slider. And click on the “Add Element” button.

2. Select Smart Slider 3 element

Then select the Smart Slider 3 element from the list.

3. Select the slider what you want to show

After that, paste the slider ID or alias, or click on the “Select slider” button and select your slider which you want to add.

4. Save the page

Finally, you will see that a Smart Slider 3 element has been added to your page and you can freely save your page.

Other Reasons to Use WPBakery Page Builder and Smart Slider 3

As you’ve seen, WPBakery Page builder offers basic posts slider functionality that is great if want to show your latest posts on your site. However, installing a feature-rich slider plugin like Smart Slider 3 alongside WPBakery will give you more creative, advanced options for creating sliders.

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

In addition to the huge library of 180+ customizable sliders, blocks, and page templates you get access to with Smart Slider 3, one feature you’ll appreciate if you’re running an ecommerce store is the ability to create WooCommerce product sliders and carousels. With this feature, you can easily add product sliders anywhere on your site, complete with titles, descriptions and buttons.

Creating sliders for testimonials, videos, logos, social media, and more isn’t a problem either. You can easily create any kind of slider with Smart Slider 3. WPBakery Page Builder does let you integrate with other slider plugins, like Revolution Slider, and offers addons for creating sliders and integrating with other slider, but you’ll need to pay for access.

Using a powerful slider plugin like Smart Slider 3 together with WP Bakery also gives you the ability to create advanced sliders and blocks that feature layered animations, social icons, image hover effects, dynamic content, parallax scrolling effect, Google fonts, the Ken Burns effect and more.

Wrapping Up

If you’re looking for a way to create beautiful custom sliders for your WordPress site, using WPBakery Page Slider and Smart Slider 3 together is a great option. Smart Slider 3 lets you extend WPBakery existing capabilities so you can great beautiful sliders that match your site design. You can get started for free with Smart Slider 3. Start using it with WPBakery today for a powerful suite of WordPress customization tools!

Do you use WPBakery Page Builder on your site? If you have any questions about using WPBakery Page slider and Smart Slider 3 together, let us know in the comments below!

The post Smart Slider 3 and WPBakery Page Builder appeared first on Smart Slider 3 — WordPress Plugin.

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