Meta Slider plugin is simple to use and lets you choose between four different “types” of sliders – Flex, Nivo, Coin, and Responsive. Each type is responsive, and gracefully changes sizes for different types of devices, and offers various features for layering and transitions.  You can easily swap between the four types to find the one that suits you.

If your theme does not include functionality for a slider, you previously had only three choices:

    • Rotating Post Gallery – this is the plugin the Commons uses on its Home page.  It has many great features, but it has several drawbacks: it is not responsive, and it is a widget-only plugin – you need a widgetized area to display it.  It also only allows one slideshow per site.
    • Revolution Slider – This plugin is great on a single site, with powerful layering functionality. It allows multiple slideshows per site, using convenient shortcodes, and offers many different types of sliders and effects.
  • EasyRotator for WordPress – this is also a great plugin, but it requires that maintain your slides using an external Adobe Air application, which you need to install on your computer. It also allows multiple slideshows per site, using convenient shortcodes.

 

The Meta Slider addresses the shortcomings highlighted above.  It allows multiple slideshows per site, using convenient shortcodes.  It doesn’t require any external application, and you can layer your slides with rich text formatted with HTML.  It’s simple to quickly set up an attractive slideshow on any page or post, or on a text widget in one of your sidebars.

 

 

meta slider tab

Getting Started

  • First, decide on the dimensions of your slider for non-mobile devices.

 

  • Add the images to your media library that correspond to these dimensions. Meta Slider does a good job scaling up and down – but to avoid distortions and loss of sharpness, it’s best to get your image sizes close to your full size.

 

  • Click on the Meta Slider tab to create a slideshow.

 

  • meta slider settings Click on the “Add Slide” button to see the images in your media library. (You can also upload more images at this stage as well.)  Choose the ones you want to include.  Hold down the shift key and select multiple images.  You will see them checked.  Save and preview.  (You can always add or remove more slides later.)

 

  • Choose a slide type (i.e. Flex, Nivo, Coin, and Responsive) – each has a list “Advanced Settings” for further configurations.

 

  • Enter the slide dimension you’ve decided upon. (this should be the largest size you expect to display on your page – it will scale down on different devices)

 

  • Optionally, add some caption heading and body with links – certain slider types are better for this (Nivo, Flex).  Some HTML is parsed, so you format as needed.

 

  • To create another slideshow, simply click on the “+” sign in the Slideshow tab.

 

  • Each slide will have a automatically generated shortcode.  Simply copy and paste into your post or page.

 

 

 

 

Tutorial

This five minute tutorial should get you up and running quickly:

Hope you enjoy this plugin!

easyrotatorThe Easy Rotator for WordPress plugin provides an easy way to add a custom slider to a page or post, or to a widget area.  You can add as many distinct sliders as you want to your site, and use many different template styles.  Animation can be customized for each separate slider, and depending upon the template you choose, text and links can be added to suit your needs.  This is a great plugin to use if you’re using a basic theme like Twenty Twelve and want to embellish your content with some dynamic images.  Pictures can be selected from your computer, your WP media collection, or from the images you set as “featured” on your posts.

In case you are wondering, a slider is a set of images that cycle through your page, post, or most probably, your home page.  In most cases, you can configure your slider to fade or slide, and link to a page or post that is displayed.  You can configure how long the image stays on the page, and you can control what text should overlay the image (if any).   Sliders are a good way to showcase the contents of your site. 

Getting Started

Setup is a little different for this plugin.  Once activated, you should see the following box at the top of your dashboard:

easyrotatorInstall2Click on the install button, and follow the instructions to install EasyRotator’s editor application onto your computer.  This also involves installing Adobe Air.  This one time process takes a couple minutes to complete.  Once done, you will see a new icon when you go to edit a page or posteasyrotatorbutton.  Click on the button to add a new rotator or to edit an existing one.

Getting Help

easyrotatorhelp1This plugin comes with a great help panel which can be accessed from your dashboard menu under EasyRotator tab.  It includes screenshots of the various screens you’ll need to use to set up the API and to create and customize your sliders.  It may seem overwhelming at first, but I think you’ll find the plugin is fairly easy to use and awesome in what it can do.  The plugin comes with a premium “Pro” version which the Commons currently does not support.  And it also includes a widget that you can use in your sidebar.