Create a video slider

Smart Slider 3 is a responsive WordPress slider plugin which you can easily create unlimited number of YouTube sliders with. If you want to create a video slider, simply create a blank slide first. Then from the Add panel you can select the YouTube, Vimeo or Video layer and enter the URL you want to load.

The best usage for a video gallery is to create a thumbnail slider. The thumbnails help you navigate to other slides, because you can see a small preview of the slides. And the video thumbnails can have a small play icon on them which lets the visitor know about the video on the slide.

Some tips to create a stunning YouTube slider

• If you use the YouTube layer, let the users make the choice to handle the videos: play, pause or mute them.
• If you automatically start your YouTube slider, set the volume to mute.
  Have you ever visited a website which started to “scream” on your speaker? There is nothing more annoying when you go to a website and it starts to play music or other sounds. And because of the browsers’ autoplay handling you should mute the videos, too.
• You can create a YouTube slider gallery where your goal is that the visitor watches the videos, but you can use it as a design element as well.

Have the design of the video reflected the design of your website as everything you see is connected. If you don’t have one that you think would be okay, search for “royalty free videos” on the internet. There are tons, and a lot of them are really nice looking, so I’m sure, you will find one or more appropriate ones to your website.

So if you would like to use a YouTube video for your design, you can download a royalty free video, upload it on your channel, and use it.

Most important settings of the YouTube layer

Cover image: Smart Slider 3 creates automatically a cover image for your YouTube layer from the link you gave it, but if you want another image to appear, you can upload an image which will cover your YouTube video. And if your video starts, the cover image will disappear.

Volume: If you want your video not to start with the default volume, you can change this value. And if you want to autoplay your slider because of the browser’s limitation you should mute the video.

Start/End time: You can set the Start and End time, which you can set when the video should start and end.

Centered: This option can be useful if the video and the slider ratio are different. With this setting you can set the video to be centered and cover the slide. This option can also be useful if you want to focus on the center of the video on your phone.

Controls: You can hide the controls and the time bar from the bottom of the video.

Autoplay: You can set the videos to start automatically but you should take care that you have to mute the video, because some browsers have a limitation and the video can’t play if the video isn’t muted.

YouTube generator

Do you have a YouTube channel? Have you ever thought that you display your videos in a slider, and the content will refresh automatically? With Smart Slider 3 Pro you can create dynamic sliders as well. You can even create a YouTube slider with the YouTube generator which shows the videos of your channel.

If your videos are not on your channel, you can display search results of a certain keyword. The YouTube dynamic slide generator will automatically update your slider after the given time. This means your YouTube slider will be up to date without you having to make any changes.

On the dynamic slides you can use variables which will change. So for example you can put a dynamic url on your layer which will navigate you to the actual video.

Limitation of creating a YouTube slider

Older mobile devices and tablets have a limitation, that is you can’t autoplay videos on them. This limitation happens because of the common usage of mobile internet. On mobile devices only a user’s action can start a video in your YouTube slider. Because of this, even if you set your YouTube video to play automatically, it won’t start until the user taps on the play button. But the latest browsers and devices support autoplaying videos on them, if your video is muted.

Final Thought

A YouTube Slider is great choice to make something noticeable, it calls the visitors’ attention and makes your page more powerful. And the best is that the YouTube layer is available on the Free version of Smart Slider 3! Give it a try, use our sample sliders or create a new version one. If you have any questions about how to create a YouTube slider with this WordPress plugin, leave a comment below or write us a support ticket!

The post Everything You Need To Know About YouTube Slider appeared first on Smart Slider 3 — WordPress Plugin.

https://smartslider3.com/blog/video-slider/ Tue, 28 Apr 2020 12:14:02 +0000 https://smartslider3.com/?post_type=blog&p=16395 Every WordPress website tells a story. The problem is that this story isn’t so interesting for the visitor without a visual impact. No matter how great your website is, if it can’t catch the visitor’s attention, it won’t convert. Web designers love using images to grab attention when they create amazing sites. Images help you […]

The post Why do You Need a Video Slider on Your Website? appeared first on Smart Slider 3 — WordPress Plugin.

]]> Every WordPress website tells a story. The problem is that this story isn’t so interesting for the visitor without a visual impact. No matter how great your website is, if it can’t catch the visitor’s attention, it won’t convert. Web designers love using images to grab attention when they create amazing sites. Images help you tell your story, but they have a big downside: they’re static design elements. While a nice looking image slider does help, a video slider is what’s going to make the biggest impact.

What is a video slider?

A video slider is a slider which contains mostly, or only videos instead of static images. These videos can cover any topic your site can take advantage of. YouTube, Vimeo and MP4 videos are the most popular videos you can find in a video slider.

You can use your video slider to show online lessons, cooking tutorials or user testimonials. Using a video slider instead of a single video has many advantages. You can separate your content to smaller parts, giving the user control over it.

For instance, if you create a video slider to show testimonials, make a video for each testimony. This way your soon-to-be customers can:

• learn how many testimonials you have,
• learn more about those who use your product, and
• watch the videos in the order they prefer.

Why are video sliders so powerful?

The human eye reacts to movement almost immediately. Since videos move, they make the user focus on the video’s content as soon as possible. Additionally, a video is one of the best demonstrating tools at your disposal.

Let’s say you’ve created the best product ever, and you want to show your visitors how great it is. What’s the best way to do so? Add a video to your site where you show this product and talk about it. Even if it’s just a one minute video, it makes a better impact than written texts or images would. Unless your visitors read quickly, they can’t read many words within a minute. But they have no trouble focusing on a one minute video where you can not only talk, but take things visual.

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How to find the best video slider plugin for your WordPress site?

The easiest way to add an HTML video slider to your site is to find a great slider plugin. There are hundreds of slider plugins out there, and it’s hard to find the best one. It’s important to figure out what do you need the plugin to do. For instance, where are your videos hosted? Do you use YouTube, Vimeo, or are you planning to host your videos on your site?

If you plan to show videos from YouTube, you need to select a slider which supports that. Customization options are also important features to consider. For example, does it matter to you how your video slider looks? Do you need arrows, thumbnails or other fancy features?

It’s important to find a video slider plugin that suits your needs and your budget. If you don’t have money to spend, it’s important for the slider to have a free version. Smart Slider 3 has an excellent free version, which you can use to create a beautiful video slider. It supports adding videos from Vimeo and YouTube, so it’ll suit most people’s needs. Smart Slider 3 is a great tool to create a stunning video slider without programming skills. In fact offers a drag and drop interface to create your content. Additionally, you can create fully responsive sliders.

How to make a video slider?

Using Smart Slider 3 you can add videos to your sliders easily. Here are the steps to follow:

1. Download and install Smart Slider 3
2. Create a new slider
3. Click on Add slide and select Blank
4. Go to the Slide Editor of your new slide and add a YouTube or Vimeo layer
5. Paste the link of your video to the URL field
6. Adjust the Aspect Ratio if needed.

Where to put my video slider?

Finding the perfect place for your video slider isn’t as easy as it seems. For instance, you can use the video as a hero header. In this case, it’s important to let this video be the first thing the visitor sees on your site. If you have a product to sell, it’s also a good idea to put the video above the fold.

But there are video sliders which are best to remain below the fold. For instance, a testimonial slider would look odd as a hero header. The visitor needs to learn more about the product or service from the author first. They’re only interested in testimonials when they’re ready to buy the product or service.

Create a dynamic YouTube slider

When you decide to add video sliders to your site, usually you need to add all videos one by one. This is a time consuming process if you have many videos. Not to mention you need to replace the videos by yourself if you no longer need them. This all sounds very time consuming in the long run.

Fortunately, Smart Slider 3 Pro has a solution for you: the YouTube video generator. After a quick Google API set up, you can start creating dynamic slides from your playlists. If you put a new video to your playlist it will appear on the slider as soon as the generator’s cache refreshes. If you don’t have a playlist you want to use, you can also create a dynamic slide by searching for a keyword.

Create an automatic Vimeo slider

You can create a video slider automatically from your Vimeo videos as well. All you need is the Pro version of Smart Slider 3 and a Vimeo account. You’ll need to spend a few minutes to set up a Vimeo App, then you can start creating beautiful sliders. Good news are that you only need to set up the app once, then it will work forever, just like the Vimeo generator. Unless you want to change the Album where your videos come from, you won’t need to do anything.

Add video from local source

Hosting videos on 3rd party websites are not suitable for everybody. People who host their own videos don’t depend on a 3rd party website to show the content to their visitors. Self hosted videos don’t have ads, and allow more control.

In Smart Slider 3 there are three ways to use a self hosted MP4 video on your site. You can use this video as a layer, slide background or slider background. Slide and slide backgrounds cover the whole slider, regardless of its size. Unfortunately, layers might not be able to do that on all possible screen sizes. So MP4 video sliders are more versatile than YouTube or Vimeo ones.

How to use video in slider?

Creating a stunning video slider is a challenging task. We’ve gathered the best video slider examples you can easily create using Smart Slider 3. What’s even more, you can import these samples with just a couple of clicks.

Yoga Hero Block

This slider uses a minimalist approach to create an amazing hero slider. There’s a shape divider at the bottom, which covers part of the video background with a white color. This makes the row stand out creating the effect of a broken grid layout.

Vimeo Slider

People like knowing what they get when they interact with any website. Showing the title and a short description of the video they’re going to watch gives them this experience.

YouTube slider

A stunning YouTube slider doesn’t have to have fancy features. A simple, minimalistic slider with thumbnails can do the job, too. Just look at the example above! Visitors can navigate fast and easily and watch the videos in the order they would like to.

Video Block

A full page hero slider is also a great choice to add video to your website. The slider above takes a minimalistic approach with a few lines of text only. The video catches the visitor’s attention, while it has a handy one page navigation at the bottom.

Video Showcase

A showcase slider is not the obvious choice to create a video slider, but it does the job well. This Video Showcase slider, for instance, shows the next and previous videos. The actual video opens up in a lightbox when the visitor choses to view it.

Static Testimonial

Video sliders are great to show testimonials, even if they’re not about the actual testimony. As this example shows, they’re great to support your message with a visual impact.

Conclusion

Smart Slider 3 is the best video slider plugin for WordPress. It lets you create responsive sliders with videos, using a simple drag and drop interface. Additionally, it offers beautiful video slider templates to start with. What more could you ask for?

The post Why do You Need a Video Slider on Your Website? appeared first on Smart Slider 3 — WordPress Plugin.