Smart Slider 3 and Its Features

With the help of this flexible and user-friendly WordPress plugin, designers and developers can make eye-catching and engaging sliders for their websites. All the tools you need to captivate your audience and improve user experience are available with Smart Slider 3. All thanks to its user-friendly UI and its variety of capabilities.

Smart Slider’s primary features include:

• Drag-and-Drop Editor and Layers: Smart Slider 3 provides a drag-and-drop editor that makes it easier to create and customize sliders. You can add and organize many unique layers, such as text, images, videos, and others with ease to create the layout that you want.
• Responsive Design: Smart Slider 3 helps you ensure that your sliders look amazing on all platforms by changing the layout and design to fit various screen sizes. In today’s mobile-centric world, when visitors access your website from a variety of devices, responsiveness is essential.
• Animations and Effects: Add some eye-catching effects to your sliders to make them more engaging. With the numerous pre-built animations Smart Slider 3 offers, you can add motion to each layer to create a better interface.

• Template Library: There’s no need to worry if you are just starting out with Smart Slider 3 as they provide their users with an extensive library full of skillfully designed templates. So you can get a headstart and some guidance in your design process, they offer various templates in different styles, targeting different purposes.

Benefits of Using Smart Slider 3 for Digital Product Design

Let’s look at some of the main benefits Smart Slider 3 offers to make your digital product design easier and more fun.

• Increases Visual Appeal: You can design visually appealing sliders with Smart Slider 3 that capture the users’ attention and make a lasting impression. You can improve the aesthetics of your products by including interesting images, layers, animations, and effects.

• Better User Engagement: Sliders made with Smart Slider can interact with users and effectively make them engage. You can direct customers’ attention and entice them to explore further by strategically placing call-to-action buttons, emphasizing essential features, or displaying products.

Live Preview

 

• Seamlessly Works with WordPress: WordPress is the most widely used content management system (CMS) in the world, and Smart Slider 3 works with it without a hitch. You can quickly build and manage sliders on your WordPress-powered websites, saving you time and effort.
• Efficiency in Terms of Time and Money: By using the drag-and-drop editor and the pre-made templates in Smart Slider 3, you can lower development costs and advance the design process. Without much coding and design expertise, you can easily create eye-catching sliders thanks to the user-friendly interface and ready-to-use layers.

Examples of Successful Digital Product Design in Smart Slider 3

Let’s look at some actual cases of successful digital products that were using this WordPress plugin to fully demonstrate the influence of Smart Slider 3 on digital product design.

Full-Width Product Carousel

A Full-Width Product Carousel’s main objective is to present the products in an appealing way to the eye. However, by utilizing Smart Slider 3 to improve its appearance, it goes beyond a simple product display. Additional capabilities offered by Smart Slider 3 enhance the carousel’s appearance, not to mention that other product-related material can be highlighted. So, emphasizing product names, promoting discounts, and offering other product-related materials are easily included.

With Smart Slider 3, the Full-Width Product Carousel delivers a dynamic and engaging experience, while additionally providing an effective way to present items. This makes it a beneficial tool for online product promotion.

Live Preview

Post Slider Carousel

This digital product is a Post Slider Carousel, which uses a dynamic slider structure to display the most recent or primary content. This product’s design has been perfected with Smart Slider 3. This way it acquires more features with stunning design options. The content can be presented with the carousel slider type, which leads to an engaging user experience.

With the help of this plugin, the digital product can efficiently and aesthetically present the most important or recent posts, grabbing the users’ attention and encouraging them to explore and interact with the material.

Live Preview

Real Estate Slider

The Real Estate slider mixes outstanding visual effects with a minimalistic appearance. It is intended mostly for portfolio or real estate websites. Its design has been significantly based on the unique design capabilities of Smart Slider 3. This slider provides an aesthetically pleasing layout, grabbing users’ attention.

Moreover, Smart Slider makes it possible to incorporate stunning effects that give the slider a feeling of energy and beauty.

Live Preview

Logo Carousel

The Logo Carousel is used to highlight sponsors, partners, or clients. Its goal is to present logos in a fun and interesting way. The layout, transitions, and animation options are flexible, enabling you to shape it to your liking with Smart Slider 3.

It’s a very powerful tool for highlighting or promoting the brands connected to a company or organization, increasing their visibility, and establishing collaborations.

Live Preview

Instagram Carousel

Users can make stunning carousels out of their Instagram photos with the Instagram Carousel. They can easily present their posts from Instagram and make eye-catching carousels, all thanks to Smart Slider 3’s flawless functionalities. The various design options enable them to create captivating carousels that display their Instagram material in an enticing way. It’s an effective tool for social media marketing and content promotion.

Live Preview

Showcase Portfolio

With the Showcase Portfolio slider, users can present their portfolio pieces in an interactive way. Its design provides a visually captivating approach to highlight projects and creative work. They can take advantage of Smart Slider’s versatility to create alluring portfolio sliders. It offers a variety of design options to exhibit portfolio items in an engaging way. Artists, designers, and professionals can use this slider to display their projects and make an impact on visitors.

Live Preview

Politician Slider

The Politician slider introduces visitors to the company and its objectives. Regardless of one’s political background, it offers an appealing and professional look. Besides, it integrates powerful design elements and popular effects to make sure that the objectives or the company are presented in a memorable way. This slider is a useful tool for people or companies who are trying to successfully deliver their message and make an impact on visitors.

Live Preview

Testimonial Thumbnail

The Testimonial Thumbnail slider uses visuals, particularly brand logos, to increase credibility and trust with visitors. These are efficiently displayed using thumbnails. Just like all the other products, this one as well is perfected by Smart Slider 3’s features.

Users can make an interactive and eye-catching slider that displays the logos of businesses they have collaborated with. Potential customers feel more confident in the company or individual as a result of this demonstration of reliable partnerships.

Live Preview

These examples show the adaptability and influence of the plugin in producing interesting and beautiful sliders by integrating it into the digital product design workflows.

We’ll go into detail about utilizing Smart Slider 3 to develop a digital product in the following part. From the installation and customization to the optimization of your slider, we’ll provide you with some additional tips to support you on this journey. So let’s dive in!

How to Design a Digital Product with Smart Slider 3

As we have already covered the benefits of using Smart Slider 3 for digital product design, let’s go through the actual steps we have to take in order to leverage its power in designing stunning and effective sliders for your own digital products. Let’s take a closer look at the process, from installation to optimization.

Installing and Setting Up Smart Slider in WordPress

1. Firstly, log in to your WordPress dashboard.
2. Then, in the “Plugins” section, you can find the “Add New” option, click on it.
3. Find Smart Slider 3 in the search.
4. Then, select the “Install Now” option.
5. And lastly, when it’s done with the installation click on “Activate”.

As soon as it has been activated you can find Smart Slider in the sidebar menu of your WordPress dashboard.

Exploring Customization Possibilities

• Create a New Slider: From the Smart Slider 3 menu, select “New Project” to start creating your slider.
• Select a Template: Smart Slider 3 provides a large selection of unique templates to help you get started on your design. Then choose one from the library that fits the objectives and style of your digital product.
• Add Layers: After selecting a template, you can take advantage of Smart Slider 3’s layer capabilities. You can easily add images, buttons, and other interactive features.
• Customize the Layers: Then, you can start customizing the slide elements. Simply click on a layer and edit it, apply animations, adjust styling, or add new layers as needed.
• Setup Slider Settings: Smart Slider 3 offers a number of possibilities for setting up your slider’s behavior and appearance. To fine-tune your design, consider choices like navigation controls, effects, timing, autoplay, and responsiveness.

Pre-designed Templates for Quick and Effective Design

A variety of pre-designed templates that are serving various industries and design aesthetics are available in the template library of Smart Slider 3. These templates are professionally designed and are fully engagement-focused.

Look through the template library and choose the one that most closely matches the goal and target audience of your digital product. You can edit a template after you’ve imported it so that it complements your branding and content. Create a customized and one-of-a-kind slider by changing the text, swapping out the images, and playing around with the design elements.

Optimizing the Slider for Responsiveness and Performance

• Make Sure Your Slider is Responsive: With the growing use of mobile devices, this is essential. The layout and sizing can be easily changed in Smart Slider 3 to fit different screen sizes. To make sure your slider looks amazing on all devices, preview it.

• Reduce Image Sizes: The performance of your digital product can suffer from large image file sizes. To guarantee that your sliders load quickly without compromising image quality, use Smart Slider’s image optimization techniques.

• Test and Improve: Thoroughly test your sliders on a variety of browsers and devices before publishing your digital product. Look for any performance, responsiveness, or functionality issues with the slider. Make the necessary changes to ensure a seamless user experience.

Conclusion

To sum it up, Smart Slider 3 is a game-changer for digital product design. You can undoubtedly elevate your designs to new heights and create appealing and engaging sliders. In addition, using this WordPress plugin in your workflow improves the overall user experience.

Without the need for in-depth coding or design knowledge, Smart Slider’s user-friendly drag-and-drop editor, responsive design features, animation effects, and template collection enable you to create aesthetically pleasing and engaging sliders. It works smoothly, making it simple to manage and optimize your website’s sliders.

While you are using Smart Slider 3 to make your digital product come to life, keep in mind to focus on a user-centered approach. So perform research, establish clear goals, and don’t leave out the wireframing and prototype stages.

All in all, by implementing Smart Slider 3, you can enhance your digital products’ design, increase user engagement, and provide unique experiences across various devices. So why wait?

The post Digital Product Design: Made Easy with Smart Slider 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

Live Preview

• Slider Blocks

Live Preview

• Animated Divider

Live Preview

• A Separator Between Sections

Live Preview

• Design Element

Live Preview

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.

Live Preview

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

Live Preview

 

• Christmas Ornament Shop

Live Preview

 

• Crypto Block

Live Preview

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.

Live Preview

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.

Live Preview

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

Live Preview

• Agency

Live Preview

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.

Live Preview

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

Live Preview

 

• Renovation

Live Preview

 

• Cooking Slider

Live Preview

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/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.

Get on board! Join our 142,416 subscribers!

Get our latest news, tutorials, guides, tips & deals delivered to your inbox.

No spam. No charge. Just curated emails.

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-countdown-layer/ Tue, 07 Dec 2021 08:31:15 +0000 https://smartslider3.com/?post_type=blog&p=43581 Smart Slider is a plugin you can use to create beautiful and responsive sliders. Additionally, it’s full of stunning features to enrich your site with. Furthermore, features help you create a memorable experience for your visitors. Today we’re proud to announce that a new layer has arrived in Smart Slider Pro. This effect opens up […]

The post Introducing Countdown Layer appeared first on Smart Slider 3 — WordPress Plugin.

]]> Smart Slider is a plugin you can use to create beautiful and responsive sliders. Additionally, it’s full of stunning features to enrich your site with. Furthermore, features help you create a memorable experience for your visitors. Today we’re proud to announce that a new layer has arrived in Smart Slider Pro. This effect opens up more possibilities for you to use Smart Slider on your site. From now on you can create cool countdown timers using the brand-new Countdown Layer.

What’s a countdown timer?

A countdown timer is a visual timer that counts down to a specific date. It’s a popular way to count down to something you’re looking for. For example, you can use it on your maintenance page to tell the early visitors when your site opens. Another favored way to use countdowns is to get ready for an upcoming sale. Similarly, you can use a countdown even if you are already running a sale. Using a countdown you can let your buyers know how much time they’ve got until the sale is over. As a result, you can urge them to buy your products or services.

Get on board! Join our 142,416 subscribers!

Get our latest news, tutorials, guides, tips & deals delivered to your inbox.

No spam. No charge. Just curated emails.

The Countdown layer has arrived!

The Countdown layer has arrived at Smart Slider Pro in version 3.5.1.2. After updating, you can add a countdown to any slide. This layer is a great way to create a visual timer that you can add to your slider. To create a new countdown layer, simply open up the layer list and find the countdown layer under Special.

New template sliders

Every new Smart Slider feature comes with gorgeous example sliders. There’s no difference with the Countdown layer either. To show the strength of the new layer and to inspire you, we’ve created not one, but 3 slider templates. Let’s take a quick look at them.

Bonsai

The Bonsai template is a slider that counts down to new product arrival. It features a CTA button to learn more about the products until they’re available.

Dance Festival

The Dance Festival template is a spectacular way to count down to the start of the festival. The background video fills the template with life, the layer animations amaze the visitors and the countdown gives the final touch.

Coming Soon

The Coming Soon template helps you create an announcement that you’re working on your site and it will be ready soon. It helps raise excitement and create a memorable experience.

Looking to jump into slider design but don’t know where to start? The How to Build video series is a great first step. These videos cover the basics of slider building: slider settings, controls, layers, layout, and responsive settings.

Conclusion

Smart Slider is full of amazing effects you can use on your site. Recently we have added the Morph and Distortion animations and the Before After layer. In the 3.5.1.2 version we added the Countdown layer for our Pro users. This layer is a great addition to the tons of cool things you can do with Smart Slider. In fact, it opens up many doors to create things that were not possible before. What’s the first countdown you’ll create?

The post Introducing Countdown Layer appeared first on Smart Slider 3 — WordPress Plugin.

]]> https://smartslider3.com/blog/before-after-slider/ Tue, 26 Oct 2021 06:24:51 +0000 https://smartslider3.com/?post_type=blog&p=42837 We know how tough it is to stand out from the crowd. For this reason, it’s our goal to always add new, stunning features to Smart Slider. These new additions can help you create amazing sliders with spectacular effects. Recently we have brought you the Morph and Distortion animations. Today we’re excited to announce another […]

The post Introducing Before After Layer appeared first on Smart Slider 3 — WordPress Plugin.

]]> We know how tough it is to stand out from the crowd. For this reason, it’s our goal to always add new, stunning features to Smart Slider. These new additions can help you create amazing sliders with spectacular effects. Recently we have brought you the Morph and Distortion animations. Today we’re excited to announce another new feature. Starting from 3.5.1.1 you can create a Before After slider with Smart Slider Pro.

What is the Before After layer?

The Before After layer is a simple and effective way to show two images in the sample place. Think of it like having the two images below one another. You can select which one you want to see by dragging a line shaped separator tool on top of the pictures. The first image displays completely when the separator is at the right side. Similarly, the second image displays when the separator is at the left side.

Get on board! Join our 142,416 subscribers!

Get our latest news, tutorials, guides, tips & deals delivered to your inbox.

No spam. No charge. Just curated emails.

What’s the purpose of the Before After slider?

The before after slider is the perfect tool to create a visual comparison. For this reason, there are many cases when you can use this effect. A photographer can use a before and after slider to display their skills. For example, they can show how well they have colored a black and white photo.

Another typical use case is to show off two stages of a transformation. For instance, when someone changes their hairstyle they can use a before and after photo to show it. Another use case is to demonstrate the results of a new diet or workout routine.

The Before after layer has arrived at Smart Slider!

We’re excited to announce the release of the stunning Before After layer! With the 3.5.1.1 update, the new Before After layer is available for the Pro users. This layer allows you to create gorgeous before and after image sliders. Simply add a new Before After layer, select your images and your effect is ready. It’s important to note that you can create a Before After slider using a layer. The Before After images were meant to be part of the content, so they can’t be the backgrounds of a slide. As a result, the Before After layer works with all slider types.

Why should you use a Before After slider? Well, it’s super versatile, so you can use it to achieve many things. You can, obviously, display two images to compare them. You can also add labels to each image and a caption to describe what the layer is about. Additionally, you can choose whether you want a horizontal or vertical comparison.

Before After slider examples

Every new Smart Slider feature comes with inspiring example sliders. There’s no difference with the Before after layer either. To show the strength of the new effects and to inspire you, we’ve created not one, but 4 slider templates. Let’s see a quick overview about them.

Product Compare

Although it’s called Before after slider, you can use it for much more than just to show before and after images. In fact, you can use it for product comparison as well. For example, if you sell clothing you can use a Before After layer to show two color variations of the same product.

Diet Block

A Before After slider is perfect to display transformation. One of the most typical cases of such transformation is to show the results of a new diet or workout routine. Using the Before After layer you can easily show such transformations on your site.

Photo Compare

The Photo Compare template is a great way for a photographer to allow visitors to compare the pictures they took. At this template we used monochrome and colored images, but you can use anything else you’d like. For example, compare shots you took at different times of a day, like a sunset or sundown photo.

Renovation

The Renovation slider is a bit closer to the traditional way people think of the Before After slider. It displays two stages of the renovation. The starting stage, before the renovation happened, and the finished result.

Conclusion

Not a long time has passed since we brought you the Morph and Distortion animations. Now we have brought you another amazing feature, the Before After layer. It’s another great addition to Smart Slider Pro. You can use it to create stunning sliders you could never create before. When will you start creating Before After sliders?

The post Introducing Before After Layer 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 […]

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

]]> 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/layer-slider/ Thu, 30 Apr 2020 14:30:22 +0000 https://smartslider3.com/?post_type=blog&p=16614 With a nice layer slider you can increase the visual appearance of the website. You might have heard the expression: a picture is worth a thousand words. However this is true, sometimes a picture isn’t enough to tell the whole story, you need text for that. You might wonder what the main difference between a […]

The post Create a Unique Layer Slider with Smart Slider 3 appeared first on Smart Slider 3 — WordPress Plugin.

]]> With a nice layer slider you can increase the visual appearance of the website. You might have heard the expression: a picture is worth a thousand words. However this is true, sometimes a picture isn’t enough to tell the whole story, you need text for that.

You might wonder what the main difference between a layer slider and the common responsive image slider is. Well, the answer is both simple and complex. No single image tells the story the way an image and some words do. Words make your layer slider unique, and being unique is a valid goal when you create your website. In fact, a visitor only remembers the special website encounters. Hence you want your website to be this special encounter.

With Smart Slider 3 you can easily create a layer slider and achieve your goals. You can add as many layers as you want and you can also customize them all without using any code. Would you like to try how simple it is? You won’t lose anything because you can download Smart Slider 3 for free. Give it a chance and create your own layer slider!

What is a Layer Slider?

A Layer Slider is a slideshow which is built up from layers. If you are a designer or have used an image editor, you know a thing or two about layers. The modern image editors use layers which you can design, drag & drop everywhere and customize them. If you create your own website design, each layer will contain a piece of your website.

What is a layer actually?

We can tell that layers are containers which store their content. Each layer has its own type of content you can display using it. This content makes all the difference when it comes to making the slider special. You can add caption, add new button, or even longer text to your slider.

And why are layers useful?

You can change them later without any effects on others and move them if you want. In Smart Slider 3 you can use layers too, which you can fully customize and build your own layer slider.

How to make a Layer Slider in WordPress?

1. Plan your slider
2. Choose a Slider plugin which will fit your needs
3. Put your layers on the slides
4. Check the result
5. Publish your ready Layer Slider

Best Free Layer Slider on the Market

Smart Slider 3 is your best choice of creating a free layer slider. If you look around, or have already searched for a slider plugin, you have probably observed something. If you search for a free layer slider plugin, most of them let you add some images, maybe some text. I have good news for you: with this free layer slider plugin you can choose from more layers such as a heading or button, even you can create a YouTube slider.

Already the free version of Smart Slider 3 has all the features to build a unique and colorful layer slider. You can freely use elements that are frequently available in only premium plugins. Customization won’t cost you anything either, you won’t have the impression of having a basic layer slider.

Saving time for you

What’s more, in Smart Slider 3 you can find a lot of premade layer sliders which you can easily import from the Template Library. There are ready to use templates, correctly and fully set up, you don’t need any major customization. You can insert unlimited images to improve the appearance of your page, replace the content with your own and you are ready to publish it.

Tell your Story using Layers in Smart Slider 3

In Smart Slider 3 you can choose from a lot of different types of layers. Each layer has a design tab which allows you to choose from preset settings, or style your own. You can change every detail of your layer easily.

If you add a textual layer, you can change the font family, color and size. It might be important to direct the visitor to a new page, so it’s possible to add a link to the layer. Furthermore, text layers can have background color and padding. If you add an image layer, change its text or even its title.

Additionally, you can add custom CSS class and write custom CSS codes to any layer. This is especially useful if you are a developer or if you want a really unique look.
You are the one who can tell your story the best, and if you want to tell it right, you express yourself with words. You can add these words to the slider using layers.

The most favored layers to make the slider special

Some people don’t need much more extra content but a nice caption. The easiest way to have a unique caption on your slide is to use the heading layer. You can customize this layer to match the other text on your site. The second most popular layer is the button layer. You may use it to make call to action buttons. People often use the image layer as well. It’s a common usage to upload a social icon and link this image to the social channel.

There are many more layers for you to use in Smart Slider 3, the possibilities to create your own content are endless.

Two Positions to Fit Your Needs

In Smart Slider 3 you can use two positioning modes to place your layers. Default layers work like a page builder, you can easily drag your layers, and lets you build your slides quickly with great responsive behavior. With Default layers you can design your structure by adding rows and columns like in a lot of page builders.

The other positioning mode is the Absolute, it lets you drag your layers anywhere, and you can put a layer above or below to another. Absolute layers are great to create your imagined layouts and it is useful if you want to put many layers on each other.

However, you can use the two positioning modes by mixing them. If you create the main content via Default layers, and decorate it with Absolute layer, then the responsiveness is guaranteed.

How about Responsiveness?

Nowadays it is basic to create a responsive website. So I can say that it is an expectation from a plugin to be responsive. Smart Slider 3 is a fully responsive slider plugin, and these are not just empty words, there are a lot of settings which you can reach the best responsive behavior.

As I have written above, with Default layers your can reach a great responsive behavior by default. Don’t be afraid to use a structure, the font-size modifier, and the other responsive settings which are marked with the device icons. Feel free to hide your layers on different devices if you want your slide not to be crowded.

A Carefully Chosen Layer Animation Makes your Slider Powerful

Everyone loves fancy transitions on their website. They help catch and keep the visitor’s attention for as long as possible. When you first add your slider with your content, everything stands still. Every layer is at the position where you have placed it. With a nice little movement, such as layer animation, you can make it move and it makes your layer slider special.

Managing the layer animation on the easy to use timeline

It’s hard to keep track of the layer animations when you can’t see them properly. Smart Slider 3 Pro version has a built-in timeline, it’s visual and easy to use. You can see the layer animations with different colors, also you can adjust the duration and delay of the animation. Clicking on the animation opens up its editor to quickly adjust it if needed.

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

Final Thought

Creating a layer slider is a good way to make your slider unique. Smart Slider 3 is the best choice to create your slider, it is free, fully responsive and you can use a lot of layers on your slides. Thumbnail slider, video slider or landing pages – these are just a part of what you can achieve with this superb plugin!

The post Create a Unique Layer Slider with Smart Slider 3 appeared first on Smart Slider 3 — WordPress Plugin.

]]> https://smartslider3.com/blog/what-is-a-layer-and-how-to-use-it-in-smart-slider-3/ Thu, 23 Apr 2020 08:00:25 +0000 https://smartslider3.com/?post_type=blog&p=13266 Nowadays it isn’t new if you surf on the Internet and encounter a slideshow or a slider in a webpage. People love sliders because this is a super design tool which can help to grab your visitors attention. But how you can you cheer up a slider? Use layers! And if you put some attractive […]

The post What is a Layer and How to Use it in Smart Slider 3? appeared first on Smart Slider 3 — WordPress Plugin.

]]> Nowadays it isn’t new if you surf on the Internet and encounter a slideshow or a slider in a webpage. People love sliders because this is a super design tool which can help to grab your visitors attention.

But how you can you cheer up a slider? Use layers! And if you put some attractive texts, icons, buttons, images or videos on your slider you can share content with your visitor.

In Smart Slider 3 you can choose from 24 layers, so there are tons of options to add various content to your slider. What kind of layers can you even use? Why is it useful to use layers in your slider? How to use them? In this article I will write about what you should know about layers.

What is a layer in Smart Slider 3?

Layers can be familiar for you from modern graphic softwares like Photoshop. We can tell that layers are containers which store your content. According to Wikipedia.org

“Layers are used in digital image editing to separate different elements of an image.”

Each layer has its own content, so it can be an image, a heading or a button, which can tell your story. And what is important that you can move and change them without affect on other layers. They are fully customizable like in Smart Slider 3 too. You can change the size, the color, the font-family, transparency, the position and almost everything that people usually want to change. And in the live slide editor you can see all the changes that you have set without saving it.

What is even more superb? You don’t need to code to change something, so Smart Slider 3 is ideal for every beginner.

In the plugin you can find everything in one place, it’s easy to use and not least, fully responsive. There are 5 main layer groups available, each containing a set of layers you can use for similar purpose. You can learn more about the groups and individual layers below.

📘 Content layers
📷 Image layers
💡 Advanced layers
🔨 Special layers
🎬 Media layers

Get on board! Join our 142,416 subscribers!

Get our latest news, tutorials, guides, tips & deals delivered to your inbox.

No spam. No charge. Just curated emails.

📘 Content layers

Content layers are the most often used layers which use content elements. You can share content with your visitors with these layers and you can draw their attention as well. Content layer can be a heading, a text, a list or a button, so something you can publish a content with.

Heading layer – free

Heading layer is one of the most popular layers which you can make headings with. Many visitors in most cases just skip the contiguous texts and pay attention to only the heading part, and if it seems interesting, they will read the other parts afterwards. So the heading is the most often used method for communication with the visitor and calls attention. Use it for a product name or a good blog title which can reach that the visitor read more.

But a heading is not important only for readers, because search engines look for them. At a Heading layer you can set the HTML tag which means you can use h1 to h6 or div. And this setting is good for SEO, because Google and other search engines can manually read the content from your slider.

But Heading layer is not just a basic heading text, because in Smart Slider 3 you can position or animate it, you can set the style and you can customize it as the other layers as well.

In this layer you have the opportunity to have a split text animation. That means you can animate your text either separated by words or its characters and it can be a cool effect. So if you would like to highlight a piece of information, you can use this nice effect to achieve that.

Heading layer tips

• Use Heading layer for highlighting an important, relevant content
• Set an easy to read font and an ideal readable font-size, and use matching fonts together.
• Use the font-size modifier to make your text responsive.

Text layer – free

With the Text layer you can make paragraphs which can tell your story. You can display longer, flowing texts on your website, where you can explicate what you talked about in the Heading layer.

But what is the difference between the Heading layer and Text layer?
Text layers are paragraphs which are defined with <p> tags, these are usually the default text on most web pages. But Heading layers are typically used for large texts, where the content and the tags are very important because of SEO. Users skim the pages by their heading, and after they read the paragraphs. So a Text layer can be below a Heading where you write about a topic.

At Text layer you can also set up different texts for different devices. This option can be important if you would like to make your slider responsive but you have a longer text which doesn’t seem well on a phone. This layer can be useful, because you can make your text shorter on mobile and tablet, so the text can fit in the limited screen sizes of mobile devices. You can even use HTML tags in your text which can customize your content.

Text layer tips

• Use for descriptions or paragraphs
• Don’t be afraid to use empty spaces between the paragraphs, because the visitors won’t read a crowded. Use a minimal nice layout!
• If you would like to put a link into a text, or make a word strong, you can use HTML codes in that
• Use it if you want to display different texts for different devices.

Highlighted Heading – PRO

This layer is available from version 3.3.7 PRO

While in the Heading layer you can create a simple headline, in Highlighted Heading you can put the focus on the important part of your heading with a highlight.

You can choose from a lot of types of highlights and you can customize their width and color as well. What is more you can also animate them. You can set the duration, the delay of the animation and you can loop it too.

Nowadays you can encounter this type of highlighting in a lot of website, and I can tell you it is trending now, it is a good design element which can cheer up your website.

Animated Heading – PRO

This layer is available from version 3.3.8 PRO

Animated Heading layer animates your heading and helps your visitor focus on your messages in one place. So with Animated Heading you have the opportunity to have more text in one place and you can animate or change these texts. This layer can rotate different highlighted texts with the chosen animation, like the typewriter or rotating effect. There are 9 animation types available now what you can use.

Maybe you would like to loop your animation, so with a simple switch you can turn the loop on and can change the delay, the speed and the duration as you imagined.

Button layer – free

I think button layers are the most important part of some slider types, because you can make an interaction with your visitor with the buttons. You can use these call-to-action elements if you want to give the visitors something to click and take an action. With an attractive text like “Learn more”, “Read more” or “Sign up” you can navigate your visitor to another part of your page. Or if you promote a product or a service on your slider, this is a good opportunity to add a button to your sliders and navigate to the next steps.

If you have a one page site, buttons are very useful part of the navigation. In Smart Slider 3 you can add a link to your slider and can smoothly scroll to a certain section of your page.

What is also useful that you can navigate to another slider with the link option, and you don’t need to code for that. Also you can open your content by clicking on your layer in a lightbox which can be really cool.

List layer – PRO

List layer is a very simple layer which you can make lists with. Every word in a new line will be a new item in the list. So you can create a list without having to code it. You can also choose from more list types what you can set at the Layer window. You should pay attention not to create too long lists, because your slider will be crowded.

📷 Image layers

You can set an image as a background, but this isn’t the only option to use an image in Smart Slider 3. You can use image layers, which you can fully customize, you can set the width and the height of your layer, you can link them, and you can use more layers on your slider. Not only a simple image layer is available, but there are layers with effect or captions and you can use icons too.

Image layer – free

With image layer you can put images into your slides. Also you can link them and you can make your image SEO friendly. There is an option to optimize your image if it’s needed, so you can make optimized images for mobile and tablet, and your slider will load faster. With image layers you have tons of options to design your slider, and if you use canvas editing mode, then you can put a layer above or below another. But with using structures you can create beautiful layouts as well.

Image area layer – PRO

The image area layer is very similar to the image layer, but you can make it always have the same size. You will love this layer if you have more images with different sizes and you would like to fill a given area in the slider. For example if you have a WooCommerce shop and you would like to show the featured image of the product, you can use this layer.

There are 2 filling modes available at this layer: fit and fill. If you want your image to cover the whole layer use the fill mode, or to make the whole image visible inside the layer use the fit filling mode.

Image box layer – PRO

The image box layer uses an image, the heading and the description of the image. This means you can manage everything in one layer, so you don’t need to use other layers for a heading or description. What is also fantastic that you can move your box, so the image and the text together. And with a layer duplication you can easily make a layout, and you should change just the text and the image later, but the layout is ready.

Of course you can design the heading and the description separately at the layer window. So you can set for example different font-size or font-family, and colors to your texts. Last, but not least you can use icons instead of an image, if you would like to.

Caption layer – PRO

Caption layer is a simple image, which will show a text on your image when you hover over it. It can be useful if you would like to display a little description on your image, and with this layer you can realize it easily.

Icon layer – PRO

With an icon you can always cheer up your slider and your website as well. Icons are very attractive and also look good. In Smart Slider 3 you can choose from 4 icon families, it’s easy to customize, change the size or color, and beside that you can use them on your button too.

Transition layer – PRO

Transition layers can be used to make the slides prettier, and more interactive. This layer has two image fields where you can set the normal image and the image which appears when hovering over it. I can suggest using 2 images with the same resolution, because the animation looks better with the same size. There are 3 animation types available, horizontal and vertical flip and a fade animation.

💡 Advanced layers

Advanced layers were created for developers or advanced users of Smart Slider 3 who want more functionalities. In most cases you need coding knowledge for these layer but with them you can create your unique slider.

Area layer – PRO

The area layer fills the whole layer with a color, which can be a simple background color or a gradient with 2 colors, but it can be semi-transparent or fully transparent too. In most cases it can be used for creating a line with the option to set the width and the height. So with this layer you can create a cool separator.

But Area layer can help use the slide events as well. If you want to create an animation which is triggered by hovering over a side of your slide, you can put an area there, set a transparent background and at the Events tab you can use the “Mouse enter” field. Building an animation can also help you in most cases.

Input layer – PRO

The input layer targets the developers who would like to start a search or a newsletter subscription from the slider directly. The input layer is a simple HTML input tag. If you have some coding knowledge, you can write your own code.

It is also an option to use JavaScript events to OnKeyUp or OnSubmit, and you can also send the data to a PHP file, where you can query with posts or get methods.

iFrame layer – PRO

IFrames are inline frames what can be used to embed in another document, for example a webpage or a video. So it can be a good solution if you use another video sharing platform than Youtube or Vimeo, you can use this layer and use your video in your slider. But truly you can put almost everything into an iFrame, for example Google maps, and it will work.

Joomla module layer – PRO

Joomla module layer has been created for Joomla developers. With this layer you can put a Joomla module into your slider.

HTML layer – PRO

In Smart Slider 3 you have an option to write your own HTML and CSS code in this layer. I can suggest HTML layer for developers, who want more functionality in the slider. With this ultimate layer you can create for example contact forms, amazing CSS animations or animated separators, which can make your slider more powerful.

🔨 Special layers

Progress bars and counters are becoming more popular in web design and these are not only impressive but informative as well. In Smart Slider 3 you can use these kinds of layers, and people love them.

Progress bar – PRO

The Progress bar is a great graphical tool to display some information within your slider. You can highlight processes, and every customization option is available to create your own progress bar on your site.

You can add custom prefix, postfix, what can be a % or $ or what you want. And you can add a label too. But you can leave them empty if you want to show only your skills. There are 3 kinds of value what you can add: the start, by which the progress will begin, a total value, and a value, where the process should stay. Of course you can customize everything, change the colors, font families and sizes too.

Counter layer – PRO

You can encounter a lot of websites using counters. Usually people use counters to display a number, for example number of downloads, satisfied customers or sales.

Circle counter layer – PRO

With circle counter layers you can display similar results as with the progress bar, right around the counter. And every customization option is available here as well, so easy to create a nice circle counter for your site.

🎬 Media layers

In Smart Slider 3 there are more options to add videos to your slider: with YouTube, Vimeo and Video layer. Each one works the same way, easy to embed a video and you can set covers videos, and controls.

Video layer – PRO, YouTube, Vimeo layers – free

By a video layer you can put an mp4 video into your slider and with a YouTube layer a YouTube hosted video, with a Vimeo layer a Vimeo a video from Vimeo. These layers are very similar, you can autoplay them, set a featured image, turn on the controls. Also you can set the volume, mute the videos, moreover loop them.

Audio layer – PRO

You can encounter videos in a lot of website, but playing sounds isn’t popular yet. In Smart Slider 3 you have an option to use an audio layer which allows you to play mp3 music. You can autoplay it as well and give a unique experience to your visitors.

Final Thoughts

As you can see, Smart Slider 3 is a very complex plugin with a lot of feature, and I wrote only about layers, but there are a lot of other options available like creating a dynamic sliders. With the plugin you can create a live slider which can refresh automatically from the given source such as a Post or Article, Twitter or WooCommerce, and tons of other generators.

What is also super that you can use Smart Slider 3 templates from the Template library which is fully customizable, and you can use the Slide library too. These can make your life easier and can give you ideas for your slider. So if you didn’t use Smart Slider 3 before, give it a go and try it!

The post What is a Layer and How to Use it in Smart Slider 3? appeared first on Smart Slider 3 — WordPress Plugin.

]]> https://smartslider3.com/blog/ultimate-guide-content-slider/ Mon, 20 Apr 2020 07:14:49 +0000 https://smartslider3.com/?post_type=blog&p=4912 It can be difficult trying to compete with other businesses online these days. This is due in part to platforms like WordPress, Joomla, and Magento that have simplified the process of building websites that look like they’re hot off the presses from a professional web designer (even if it’s just a plug-and-play premium theme). There’s, […]

The post The Ultimate Guide to the Content Slider appeared first on Smart Slider 3 — WordPress Plugin.

]]> It can be difficult trying to compete with other businesses online these days. This is due in part to platforms like WordPress, Joomla, and Magento that have simplified the process of building websites that look like they’re hot off the presses from a professional web designer (even if it’s just a plug-and-play premium theme).

There’s, of course, nothing wrong with having a website that looks great, but bears a resemblance to those of the competition. However, a website needs to make conversions in order to survive, which means beating the competition. So, how do you design a website in a way that makes it stand apart from the sea of lookalikes? One way to do this is by using a professional-grade and responsive content slider.

While a content slider won’t make sense for every website, when used in the right context and executed well, it can have a powerful impact on your audience.

In this ultimate guide to the content slider, we’ll delve a bit deeper into what exactly a content slider is and what it can do for your website. We’ll then discuss how to use the Smart Slider 3 to take your slider capabilities to the next level.

Should your website have a content slider?

A content slider goes by many names: slider, carousel, slideshow, and so on. Regardless of what you call it, the rotating element works the same way. It fills a designated space on your site–almost always the full (or near-full) width of the page–and it enables your visitors to flip through slides in order to consume various pieces of content at their own pace.

This can be a really helpful addition to your site–not only for you as the designer or developer trying to be smart about how you utilize available real estate, but also for your visitors.

With a content slider, you can…

Promote new blog content in a dynamic fashion, keeping the latest posts front.
Advertise the newest products, promotions, or news on the home page.
Provide a highlight reel about what’s happening with your company right now.

Consolidate videos into a single space, so visitors know where to go to watch your collection of stories, tutorials, etc.
Group related images or videos for products, properties, or services, thereby enabling visitors to see different views or uses for them without having to scroll or move to new pages.
Display a creative portfolio in a manner that’s concise, yet still absolutely eye-catching.
Tell a story or provide some other sequential narrative that users will feel compelled to click through and follow.
Share textual snippets, whether they be a collection of testimonials, statistics about your business, or inspirational quotes from recent stories or interviews you published.

So long as you use a slider for the right reasons and positively contribute to the user experience by helping your audience ingest content more quickly and conveniently, a content slider will be a great addition to your website. In sum, these are just some of the benefits generally associated with the proper use of a content slider:

• Minimalism: When you have related content or media, consolidating them into a slider could help you clean up your site’s design.
• Usability: There’s also the effect this has on your users’ ability to skim through content. Rather than force them to scroll or visit multiple pages, it’s all now in one convenient location and within a tool they can control the pace of.
• Aesthetics: Sliders give you the opportunity to show off; it doesn’t matter if you’re highlighting written or visual content. Sliders just make it look good.
• Engagement: Even if you don’t set the content slider to autoplay, the moment your visitors hover over the space and see the directional cues, this will trigger them to engage with the slider in order to view more.
• SEO: Because a slider requires users to move through more slides in order to discover new content, this increases the amount of time they spend on your pages; thus, leading to improved SEO.

As you can see, there is a lot you can accomplish by adding a content slider to your website. Now, let’s focus on how to actually do this.

Get on board! Join our 142,416 subscribers!

Get our latest news, tutorials, guides, tips & deals delivered to your inbox.

No spam. No charge. Just curated emails.

How to build a content slider on your website with Smart Slider 3

Now, of course, the content that appears on your slider plays a critical role here, too. It’s not enough to just decide that a sliding element would look cool on your homepage or to host your portfolio of images. You have to figure out what kind of content to include on your slider.

Didn’t think that was possible or even an option? If you’re using the Smart Slider 3 plugin, you can build anything with the available layers, slider types, background animations, and other features.

So, let’s talk about the different types of content you can add to your slider while taking a closer look at how to add them with the Smart Slider 3 plugin. To add a new content layer to your slide, click on the green plus sign in the top-left corner:

Choose your content type

Heading Layer

A heading layer is especially important for content slides as structured text tell readers how to prioritize the reading of it. In other words, larger heading type should be read first as it usually encapsulates what the slide is about. With this layer, you can adjust everything related to the stylization of heading text including: The message, font family, font size, alignment, font color, background color, opacity, animation, hyperlinked text and more.

Text Layer

The text layer comes next. The header introduces the title or a succinct summary of the slide and the text will provide a deeper description. With this layer, you have the same controls as you do with the header layer. The main difference is in how you choose to present the text on different devices and screen sizes.

Button Layer

For some slider designs, you might not need button (or call-to-action) elements. This is only there if you want to give visitors something to click through to. So, if you’re using your slider to promote a product, service, or want to educate them on something, this is a good opportunity to add a button that directs them to the next steps and convert.

Image Layer

If you’re not using a full-width image or video background for your slides, you can populate it with partial image content instead. Simply upload the photo you want to use and drag it into your slide. Image content can sit beside, atop, below, and in the middle of your text content. It’s up to you how you want to arrange your slides.

Caption Layer

Not every image-based slide will look good with or even make sense to use an overlay of text. Instead, if you want to provide some sort of reference to visitors about the content found on the slide, but don’t want to intrude on the experience, you can add the caption layer.

YouTube, Vimeo and Video Layer

There are a few different options for adding video content to your slides: YouTube, Vimeo, and Video. Each of these simplify the process of embedding video content from another source, even giving you the option to upload your own cover image to ensure the screengrab that shows is relevant and looks good.

In addition, there’s also an Audio layer option available in Smart Slider 3, in case you want to share a podcast or soundbyte on your slide.

Icon Layer

Icons are a perfectly succinct element which, at the same time, convey a lot of information to your visitors. Usually, these aren’t used in isolation unless you add an icon to your CTA button. Instead, you’ll find groupings of icons that are representative for a number of different services or products on a company website. With hundreds of Font Awesome icons to choose from with Smart Slider 3, you should find exactly what you’re looking for.

List Layer

The list layer feature will come in handy when writing corresponding product descriptions or if you’re creating on-site slideshows to share with your visitors. It’s simple to use too: just input your list items, choose the bulletpoint style, and then apply the text settings as you would in the other text layers.

Progress Bar

The Progress Bar is an excellent way to graphically display information within a slide. It’s perfect for highlighting the skills your team members possess, how many cups of coffee everyone drank last month, or some other fun tidbit you want to relay to your visitors.

In addition to adding the right type of content to your slider, keep in mind the following best practices when designing it:

• Make it responsive: Most sliders simply downscale the content. However, Smart Slider 3 has a Default layers, which recognizes the available space and adjusts accordingly.
• Place the most important content on the first slider or two: Studies have found those are the ones that get the most views and clicks, so don’t make your visitors wait for the good stuff.
• Optimize for search: In addition to using a plugin that makes your slider seamlessly blend with the rest of your site’s design, you need one that helps your SEO. Smart Slider 3 includes all HTML tags and attributes in order to make your sliders search-friendly.
• Set slide durations that aren’t too fast or too slow: And always remember to give your users some way to control the speed on their own if the presets aren’t to their liking.
• Remember that your audience, marketers, and even some developers have a love-hate relationship with sliders: If you want to stay in their good graces, ensure that your sliders only include high-quality, valuable, and relevant content.

Wrapping up

For those of you interested in adding a content slider to your website, but nervous about its effect on performance, style, or SEO, don’t be. The Smart Slider 3 is lightweight, responsive, and SEO-friendly slider plugin.

Just keep in mind that not every slider plugin is made equal and will get this right. Obviously, you don’t want to be stuck with an eyesore or with a slider element that compromises your site performance so badly that your pages fail to load. The content slider needs to improve the user experience, not detract from it. So, if you want to add this powerful element to your website, abide by the tips above and use a plugin like the Smart Slider 3.

The post The Ultimate Guide to the Content Slider appeared first on Smart Slider 3 — WordPress Plugin.

]]> https://smartslider3.com/blog/how-to-design-your-slider/ Sun, 19 Apr 2020 07:30:47 +0000 https://smartslider3.com/?post_type=blog&p=11205 Let’s assume you have just downloaded the free version of Smart Slider 3 and you are facing the challenge of creating your first or next slider. In the previous weeks I redesigned almost all of our template sliders so I have bulletproof design process to share with you. This article won’t be a tutorial but […]

The post How to Design & Build Your Next Slider appeared first on Smart Slider 3 — WordPress Plugin.

]]> Let’s assume you have just downloaded the free version of Smart Slider 3 and you are facing the challenge of creating your first or next slider. In the previous weeks I redesigned almost all of our template sliders so I have bulletproof design process to share with you. This article won’t be a tutorial but it will guide you how to design your new slider, block or page with Smart Slider 3.

Sliders help your visitors understand your company, product or brand through images, videos, texts, and interactions. But how can you achieve the best result and create a perfect slider? Simply follow the next 5 points and deliver more successful sliders faster and much more efficiently.

Slider design process in 5 simple steps:

💡 Planning
✂️ Preparation
🎓 Creating Your Slider
🎨 Designing & Building Your Slides
🏗️ Building Tips & Risks

Get on board! Join our 142,416 subscribers!

Get our latest news, tutorials, guides, tips & deals delivered to your inbox.

No spam. No charge. Just curated emails.

💡 Planning

Planning is the most critical part of the slider design process. Take your time and identify the slider’s goal in this early, initial stage. If you don’t have the clear goal, you won’t be able to create a proper slider design.

Questions to answer during this step:

a, What is the main purpose of your slider? Informing, selling, or entertaining?
b, What do your visitors expect?
c, What type of slider do you need? Full width slider, carousel, or just a simple block?
d, What will be the content of your slides?
e, How many slides do you need?

Take your time and answer these questions before jump right into the slider settings. It’s really easy to skip the planning stage, but this is critical for creating a successful slider.

Through these answers, you will outline the first concept of the showcase that would fit the client’s specifications.

After you figure out what the project is exactly, you can start to come up with ideas and solutions. At this point, I strongly recommend to take inspiration from our Slider Library. Those examples are all great sources to learn what’s trending now or to get new ideas.

✂️ Preparation

Using the information gathered from stage one, it is time to put a plan together. Visualization can help you organize your thoughts and shape the design of your slider. Nowadays there are several design tools available on the market, but a simple pencil and paper can be surprisingly helpful.

First and foremost, your aim is to create a wireframe then if you need you can move into a realistic mockup using a designing software such as Photoshop or Sketch.

Main points of preparation

Images: Background images have a more significant role in slider design now than ever before. Use high quality pictures and don’t be afraid to try more. It’s very important to find those photos which resonate with your goal and communicate your message clearly.

The best size for a background image is usually the size of your slider.

But the maximum should be around 1920x1080px. The most common background image size that I use is 1920x600px, because it fits very well into a full width slider. On the other hand I like to set the maximum height to 600px because it’s ideal for any content, it’s not too tall and not too short. If you have the exact image, try to compress it as small as possible. For the transparent pictures use PNG8 format and for background images use JPG and try to set the quality as low as possible without radical quality loss.

Content: While the images and effects will steal the show in slider design, you still need a good content. The content includes headings, paragraphs, images, videos, icons, buttons, and multimedia. Fortunately in Smart Slider 3 the most popular content types are available as layers. Your content is the reason why people come to your website and one of the most important parts of the good content is the good copy, because your copy will make or break the success of your slider in terms of trust, engagement and SEO.

Style: Your challenge as a designer is balancing the visual content and information content. A good design should be both pleasing to the eye, and also communicate the key messages to your audience. The really great designers have strong intention behind every decision. Generally the most important aspect of the style is the consistency. Whatever font, color, and icon style you choose, make sure that you use the same decision through all of your slides.

🎓 Creating Your Slider

We’re now at the end of the planning and preparation phase where we can start the actual visual slider design because your slider should more or less get into shape. Let’s sum up quickly what we know or what we have presently:

• Purpose of the slider
• Slider type, slide count
• Design assets (images, videos, icons and so on…)
• Content (with good copy)
• Style (outlines the design of the layers)

Here is the time to turn your vision into a live working slider or block for your WordPress or Joomla website. There are two popular ways to start: import a slider or create a new one.

Import a pre-build template Slider

As a newcomer the most comfortable way to create a slider is to import a ready to use slider from the template library. By one click you can instantly start to discover the slider settings, tweak the layers and play with the animations. When you have got familiar with the interface you will be able to replace the background images, paste your copy and change the style to your own in minutes. The whole process will usually take about 5 to 20 minutes with responsive settings and testing.

Creating a brand new Slider

In this section, I’ll be covering the most important slider related questions, options and design decisions that you have to figure out. However I’ll focus on a normal slider because this is the most common usage. Here are the crucial points to setup the slider correctly:

Slider size: In short, it can be really different because of the nature of the different sliders, but with the 1200×600 px you can’t go wrong. Doesn’t really matter if it’s a boxed, a full width, or a full page slider, this size will be a great starting point.

Slider settings: Smart Slider 3 is one of the most advanced slider plugins on the market so there is a ton of options. For example you should go to the General tab and find the perfect main animation for your slider. This is the only essential animation which will move your slides. On the Size tab you will find every height and width related settings, here I really like to use the maximum slider height. Mostly because on a bigger screen the slider can scale up really big without this setting. Last but not least you should consider to use the slider autoplay.

Controls: Scroll down a little bit and you will find the control settings like the arrows, bullets and thumbnails. This is a key moment to add a good navigation to your slider. The easiest step if you choose an arrow, later maybe you will build your own navigation with layers.

Create an experience: This is the area where Smart Slider 3 starts to really shine. It’s time to think about how you can use animations and effects to truly delight your visitor. Background animation, Ken Burns effect, animated shape divider, particle effect, every type of parallax effect? No problem, but keep in mind less can be more in the world of animations and effects.

In order to this, you will add few slides at first then go back to the Slider options and set the previously mentioned parameters like the autoplay.

🎨 Designing & Building Your Slides

This area is where all of your design assets, content ideas and style concept come into play. Once you’ve created a Slider, you will be able to add different type of Slides. Slides are those elements which have a background and can contain various types of layers. This slide creation part will be super easy for you because you made the background images and videos previously. In 2008 probably it would be the end of this article, because the slider is ready with your images. But in 2018 you’re able to build complex layouts with layers.

Working with Layers

In the free version of Smart Slider 3 every essential layer is available. As a result of this, you can transmute the previously specified content and style into a layer in no time. Every heading, text, image, button and video can be edited easily with the customization options. You can change every detail that really matters in typography and style.

Layer Positions

Smart Slider 3 stands above all of the premium sliders because it comes with two positioning modes which is totally unique: Default and Absolute positioning.

Absolute positioning: It gives you the absolute freedom, because the layers which are in this mode can move anywhere and overlap each other on the slide. This behaviour can be familiar from Photoshop or from every other premium slider plugin. At first glance this mode looks really promising but when the mobile editing comes in the picture, the editing process can be time consuming and far from effective. By default, the canvas mode maintains relative spacing between layers of the slide. So if the slider scales down then the layers also have to scale down to keep every ratio.

 

Default positioning: To avoid the previously mentioned responsive problems we released the Default positioning in version 3.2. In this positioning you can put the layers below or above each other and with rows and columns you can position them next to each other. The whole approach is closer to HTML structure. With this mode your layers will determine the height of the slider automatically in mobile and every other view.

Default or Absolute positioning?

The proper answer is both. Sometimes you need the freedom or the overlapping behaviour of the Absolute layers but sometimes you need the advantage of the structured content of Default layers in the same slide.

But all in all, try to add every layer with Default positioned layers and use Absolute layers only for overlapping and decorating.

🏗️ Building Tips & Risks

Here are few of my favorite and most useful tips to edit the slides correctly:

Three Fonts Rule

Try to limit the number of font families to maximum 3 and stick to the same ones through the entire slider. Unnecessary fonts make your slider slow, unstructured and unprofessional.

Limit the Length of your Lines

Having the right amount of characters on each line is key to the readability of your slider. The optimal line length for your text is considered to be 60-80 characters per line. Therefore, use bravely the max-width option to limit the width of your layers.

The Power of White Space

Whitespace is the distance between different elements that gives visitors some visual breaks. If used correctly, it can provide many advantages to your slider. For example: better legibility, highlighting a particular element, better user experience and more interactions. In Smart Slider 3 you can easily insert whitespace with various techniques such as margins, paddings, gutters or aligns.

Keep Mobile in Mind

It’s common problem for beginners to design different quantity of content on the slides. For example the first slide contains only a few sentences, but the next one is full of images, paragraphs or buttons. At first, everything looks great on desktop but on mobile the height of the slides can be really variable which results in awkward experience for your visitors. I typically start with a desktop layout first, however I keep mobile in mind from the start.

Try to distribute the content equally among the slides. If one of your slides has too much content, don’t be afraid to hide the unnecessary parts, and just keep the important message on mobile. Smart Slider 3 is full of responsive options and tools which will help you design the perfect slider for mobile and tablet. You can optimize the slides for mobile easily with the following device specific options: hide layer, text size modifier, align, position, size, gutter, padding, margin.

Avoid too Many Slides

My recommendation is to use maximum 5 slides per slider in normal slider scenario. Of course, if you create a product carousel, this number can be so much higher because you can see 3-4 slides at the same time. I think the only exception if you would like to create a gallery slider where your aim is to show plenty of pictures. In that case don’t forget to turn on the lazy loading option and the image optimization, with these settings you can speed up the loading time drastically.

Never Stop Testing

Testing your slider is critical both in the building phase and after you’ve got what you’ve built. Don’t forget to preview your website periodically to make sure the slider works correctly.

Closing

Design is a fluid and ongoing process that requires constant maintenance. Probably you will add new content from time to time or keep the existing content up-to-date. By following the 5 steps above, your slider design process should go more smoothly. What does your slider design process look like? Do you have any suggestions how can we improve the process? Post your ideas in the comments below.

PS.: During the next weeks we would like to write a whole bunch of articles. The topics will cover in-depth guides about responsive settings, slider loading, SEO options and so on. If you are interested, stay tuned and subscribe to our newsletter.

The post How to Design & Build Your Next Slider appeared first on Smart Slider 3 — WordPress Plugin.

]]>