10+1 Smart Slider features you probably didn’t know about

Smart Slider offers many awesome options apart from the most popular features. Some of these are not as obvious, but if you know them, they help you work faster and more efficiently. So, it’s worth knowing these options and using them in your projects. With the help of these options, you can easily become a Smart Slider expert.

1. Custom Post generator

Smart Slider has a huge list of dynamic slide generators. What can you do with a dynamic slide generator? You can use it to create slides automatically based on your WordPress post or WooCommerce products. There are also generators which work based on the content of other WordPress plugins. For example, if you use The Events Calendar plugin, you can create slides based on its events.

The Custom post generator lets you create slides from posts in your custom post types (CPT for short). What are custom post types? They’re content types like the posts or pages. There are many cases where you can use a CPT, for example, to store and display customer stories or testimonials. If you sell homes you can create a CPT where you upload each house as an individual post.

The custom post generator is also useful if you create a site for your clients. For example, you can let your client add, edit or delete slides without having to access Smart Slider.

2. Layer defaults

Do you work based on a style guide when you create sites for your clients? Having to set the same font family, color and size when you add a new layer must be tiring. Using the Layer defaults you can change the default look of the layers when you add a new one. For example, when you add a heading layer it has “Roboto,Arial” font family, white color and 36px size. If your site uses a different font family, you can change the default value, so you won’t have to change it at every layer.

3. Presets

Another cool feature to speed up your workflow is the preset. Most websites generally have different font sizes for the different heading levels. E.g. a h2 heading might have 36px size, but a h3 heading might have only 30px size. You can save each style as a new preset and apply it to your layers with one click.

4. Custom font list

When you create a layer with text, you’ll likely want to use a font family that’s different from our default font. You can either select the new font family from the predefined font list or manually type it in. Having the predefined font list is cool, but it contains lots of fonts you’ll probably never use. So why not change it to contain your most used or favorite fonts?

5. Slide Library

Smart Slider offers more than 100 ready to use slider templates for Pro users. If you don’t need a whole slider, just a single slide, you can browse the Slide Library for ideas. The Slide Library contains two themes, and each offers 90+ slides in 8 categories. The most popular categories are Header, Product and Content. So, if you create a header slider, you can check the slides in the Header category to get a headstart.

6. Static Overlay

A Static Overlay is a special kind of slide, which displays above all other slides in the slider and won’t move away. For this reason it’s recommended that you only have one Static Overlay per slider.

Static Overlays are a great way to create “global” layers, which will appear on top of other slide’s content. For example, you can create a cool slider where you put the actual content to the Static Overlay. Then you can add image slides that move under it.

7. Slider Background

Slider backgrounds are quite the opposite of the Static Overlay. While a Static Overlay is above all slides in the slider, the Slider Background is under them. So, to take advantage of the Slider Background, you need to create slides without a background. Although using semi-transparent background color on the slides help creating interesting layouts.

8. Control variables

Controls in Smart Slider are generally used for navigation. For example, we consider the arrows, thumbnails and bullets as controls. By default when you select a control you can choose from 12 positions, such as top left, bottom middle and so on. These are fix positions, and actually are fine for most people.

However, using Control variables you get more positioning freedom. Additionally, you can position controls more precisely. Let’s say you create a Showcase slider and you want arrows. Using the default positions the arrows will display on the sides of the slider. Using Control variables the arrows can display next to the active slide.

9. Variable functions

Variables are like placeholders. They tell Smart Slider what kind of content you want the layer to display. For example, you can select the title variable to display the title of the post. There’s also a variable that contains the content of your post.

That’s the basic usage of variables. When you create a dynamic slide, you might want a more advanced usage. For example, you want to display a short introduction of the post in your post slider. You can split the content and display, for example, the first 300 characters only. If you don’t use the featured image of the post (or don’t want to use that in the slider), you can look for an image in any variable.

10. Hiding layers in dynamic slides based on another variable

Smart Slider makes it easy for you to enrich your site with a WooCommerce product slider. Have you ever wished your product slider would include an “on sale” badge for the products that are on sale? The “Hide when variable empty” option helps you achieve that. You can select any variable there and if it’s empty at the product that the slide displays, the layer will not show up. How cool is that?

Here’s a video that shows how the Hide when variable is empty feature works in a WooCommerce generator. There’s a Sale badge, that displays only at those products, which are on sale.

10+1. Slider export

Having a backup of your site is always crucial. There are many reasons why you might need to restore your site’s state. Also, there are many reasons when you want to restore a specific slider as well. You can create a backup of your sliders by exporting them and saving the .ss3 export file on your computer. Then you can restore this backup by importing the slider anytime later.

Conclusion

Nowadays it’s not easy to master any WordPress plugin, because they’re so feature rich. Plugin authors want more and more people to be able to use their product for their site. As a result, it can take time to get to know all features the plugins offer. In this article I’ve collected 10+1 Smart Slider features you probably didn’t know about. They can help you create better sliders and work faster. So, if you want to be a Smart Slider expert, it’s worth knowing them.

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Why do people use WordPress carousels?

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

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

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

9 Inspiring WordPress Carousel Examples

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

1. Full Width Product Carousel

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

2. Product Carousel

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

3. Testimonial Carousel

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

4. Post Slider Carousel

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

5. Boxed Product Carousel

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

6. Logo Carousel

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

7. Post Carousel

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

8. Squarespace carousel

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

9. Playersroom carousel

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

Conclusion

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

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