18 Shares When we think of sliders on WordPress sites,we can have mixed feelings on how effective they can be. But when it’s done right, a slider can be a perfect option for your site. The key is to find the plugin that gives you enough flexibility and then planning your slider to make sure it’s a helpful feature rather than a distraction. A Solution Whether you need to present yourself or your business visually, whether it’s through images, text, video or all three, a well-done slider can benefit your WordPress site.

When you are strategically planning your slides, there are a couple of important pieces to think about. The first one is whether the slider accepts various media. For example, does it support images, text, video and custom HTML? Is it responsive? We all know that lots of content is viewed on mobile these days.

And if your slider does not adapt to different screen sizes, well, you are up a creek without a paddle. This is where, the premium WordPress slider plugin comes into play. SlideDeck is not just about adding media to a slider. It’s about adding your content—to take you in a better direction. Whether it is your blog posts, videos from YouTube or a large selection of other options, you can bring your content to a new, visual level.

And that is what I found intriguing about this plugin. Note that I am using the SlideDeck Developer License and if you check out their pricing option for the difference licenses, you can choose the one that best fits your needs. Let’s dive in Creating Your First SlideDeck After installing the plugin, you will get see a link to create your first SlideDeck. What is cool here is that you have two options. Dynamic Source: This allows you to create your SlideDeck from other sources— Vimeo, YouTube, Facebook, to name a few. Custom Content: This is where you can add your own custom content and mix it, eg. Images, videos, text or HTML, depending on your needs.

Creating a SlideDeck with a Dynamic Source As you can see, you can pull content from several sources. I have to say, this was the first thing that impressed me. We’ll start with a source and since YouTube is so popular, let’s try a Deck with videos. As you can see from this screenshot, you have plenty of options with more that can be added later. Note: I will show you a live example in a bit using an RSS feed. The first time you choose a source, you will need to configure it so content can be pulled in. And if you are using YouTube for example, you will also need to add an API in your advanced settings.

Directions for this are clearly explained in the SlideDeck support docs.You have the choice to use a search term, user name or a channel ID. I’m choosing to put it in my channel ID.

Once I’ve done that, I now can see that it’s pulling in my videos from my YouTube channel. Choosing a Lens Our first choice in the options is to select a lens. This is basically what your sliders looks like: thumbnails are shown, etc. You will, of course, have some more options for appearance as you move on.

There are a total of 14 lenses and, depending on what license you get. You can also purchase lenses as add-ons.

For the example above, we had it defaulted to Tool Kit. But just to show you the variety, here is: Block Title Lens Leather Lens Titles Lens Setup The next options allow you to have a bit more control of your SlideDeck. You can easily change the sizes, but with both video and any images, make sure your file sizes are not too small and will lose their quality at larger sizes.

There are ways to control your overlays as well. Lastly, the add-on Scheduler lets you schedule when a slide will display.

This could come in handy if you are using this within a post of an event, or even have a slider of a time-sensitive sale you may be having at any given time. Appearance With the option of choosing the overall look with a lens, now you have the extended options of tweaking the look even more. These appearances will also change, depending on the lens you use. For example, when I have the lens set to Block Title lens, as in one of the samples above, I get these options under appearance. But if I switch to the Leather lens, I get these options.

These settings are pretty self-explanatory, but here is another example: the Leather lens with appearances at default. Now if we make these changes in the Appearance: You will see the differences here. What is nice is, as you make these changes, the preview always reflects each change as it’s been made. In this example, I selected the Scale Proportionally and Do Not Crop, which resulted in a smaller video. So once you start making changes, keep in mind what size you have selected for your slider.

This will be important on how you want your media to appear. Content With SlideDeck, you also have a choice of options for controlling your content.

Again, most of these are very self-explanatory. But from this screenshot, you can see that you will be able to adjust the content to your heart’s delight. CTA’s (Calls-to-Action) In the screenshot above,toward the bottom of the Content settings, you see the option to add a CTA to your slide. This can be done with almost any slide.

What makes this so great is that a slide doesn’t always have the option for the viewer or reader to take action. So they just move on to the next slide. Let me give you a couple of examples. The slide below is advertising my online courses.

Using the settings, I was able to create a call-to-action button. The slider gives you a few options to control the look of it and you will be able to easily add the appropriate link when you create the slide itself. Also, we have the choice of a button or an image.

In this example, I have chosen to add a button to the bottom right corner so users can purchase my online courses. In the next example, I have used an image instead. I created my own custom button where people can click on it and then chat with me personally.

As you can see, with a lot of the features within SlideDeck, with some imagination, creativity and strategic marketing, you have many ways to use the CTA. Navigation There are a few choices here as well. Since navigation is very important to the usability of your site—and your slides if you are using them— pay attention to the details here.Take for example, the Touch Navigation. With mobile so prevalent in the market now, and the fact that this plugin is responsive, this is an option you will likely want to make sure to make available to your users. Playback Playback is just about an important as Navigation, so you want to make sure you have these set correctly,according to your needs. It’s nice that you can actually choose the starting slide if needed. Also, be careful when choosing autoplay.

With images, your user may not have had the chance to experience the first one long enough, and with video, any autoplay—especially one with sound—can be distracting and on the user end. I recommend that you let your users control what they want to see. Let’s Publish This SlideDeck Once you have saved your SlideDeck, you will get these options. If you are creating a new post or page, just click on either of those options and it will open a new one and insert the shortcode automatically. In this example I want to show you how to insert it into the post or page anywhere using the Insert SlideDeck button.

A new window will open letting you choose which SlideDeck you want to insert. Now you will find a shortcode, where the slider will appear in your post or page. And you get a nicely formatted SlideDeck, ready to view on your site. Just click on this image and you will be taken to the live example of this SlideDeck. One More Example of a Source Slider I cannot go through all the options for source, but I would like to share with you one more. Adding an RSS was easy to add as a source using the feed. In the example below I put in the RSS for this site, and you can see how nicely it pulled in the posts.

Slidedeck Wordpress Download For Mac Download

A Look At Creating a Slide with Custom Content A lot of the options I have shown you also are available for the Custom Content deck. The big difference here is just that: custom content. There is a lot you can do here, and of course I cannot show you it all in this review. But I will create a deck with the four slide options shown.

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When you first create a SlideDeck, it will ask you what you want your first slide to be. Image Slide In this example, I am going to load a single image, but you are able to upload multiple images as well. It will give you these three choices. Once I’ve made my choice I have several fields that I can fill in and opt to make for this one specific slide. Text Slide Now let’s add a text slide.

By choosing Add Slide at the top, then selecting the Text Slide, you get these options: three basic layouts and and editor window to create your text. You can add a slide link if appropriate. For my example, I’m doing a Block Quote. Video Slide Adding a video slide is pretty easy as well. As you can see, I have inserted the URL from one of my videos on Vimeo, added some text and I’m good to go. HTML Slide If you love HTML, you will love this.

Sgminer for mac. All source code comes from official sources. Xgminer-osx This project consists of a standard set of shell scripts for creating redistributable packages of and for Mac OS X. Prerequisites General • automake • autoconf • libtool • GNU sed • git • wget BFGMiner • openssl Install with Homebrew - e.g. The page is used to provide binary downloads for these redistributable packages. This project is a collaboration between: • John - author of • - author of Asteroid • - author of Our aim is to provide a single source for the best possible OS X binaries for cgminer and bfgminer until such time as the authors provide OS X redistributables themselves.

But if not, and before you freak out over the thought of any code, here is the beauty of this slide option. The example I’m showing you here is some simple HTML, with a newsletter signup. I went into my MailChimp account, went to the form sign-ups and grabbed that hunk of code they gave me. Now all I have to do is simply drop it in this slider option. Also, once I have created all the slides, I can preview them just as I would the source slides. In addition, I have all the options—Lenses, Setup, Appearance, Content, Navigation and Playback—that I did with a Source SlideDeck. Rather than repeating myself, I am going to leave those at default.

They also can be dragged and dropped in any order using the thumbnails above your preview window. Here are the previews of my four final slides,. And For You CSS Custom Fans Yes, if you are into CSS, you have the option to create custom CSS. And if you purchase the developer’s license, you can copy and customize your own lens. Advanced Options The advanced options that may help you if you are having any issues.

But unless you know what you are doing, I wouldn’t mess with these unless you have been given some specific directions. Some Cool Add-Ons As with most plugins these days, SlideDeck comes with some handy add-ons. The three add-ons for SlideDeck 3 are simple to use but very useful as well. Import/Export Slider As you see here, it’s as simple as exporting or importing an existing SlideDeck.

This is great if you have—or build—multiple sites and there is a SlideDeck that is so customized you will find yourself saving hours if you want to use it, especially the settings on another site. It’s easy enough to change out the media. I tested this and it worked like a charm. Lead Generation Stats If you are interested in seeing what is working and not working in your slides, this tool will help you fine tune all of your SlideDecks. It’s a useful tool if have calls-to-action built into the slides. SlideDeck Scheduler I mentioned this one earlier in the review.

You will find this in your setup settings as well as in your custom slides. So in the latter, you can schedule specific slides to show or not show in a single custom SlideDeck. In Conclusion From this review, you can see that this plugin has a lots of helpful features a ton of flexibility.

I could not cover every option or give you all the different ways you could use this plugin. But I hope this gives you a better picture of the possibilities. If you are looking for a dynamic slider that brings so much more than a simple slideshow to your site, I highly recommend SlideDeck 3. There is bit of a learning curve, depending on your comfort level with WordPress, but found the process of setting up both source and custom slidedecks very intuitive. The fact that it is both mobile-responsive and SEO-friendly makes it that much better.You have a choice of purchasing any of three licenses, depending on your needs. As with most plugins, I recommend going with the premium version for the added support your receive as well as the additional features and extendability.

I suggest you to learn more and also to see other samples, even some live ones that will give you even more ideas. BobWP runs smoothly on, and WordPress. Please note that links on this site may be affiliate links. By clicking on them you don't pay any more and I make a few bucks. We also do occasional sponsored posts.

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