WordPress Image Sliders And Galleries That Kick Ass
I love having super techy ways to display my work and photos I use here on the blog in general. So I wanted to share with you the best, because it’s a shorter list than sharing the worse. There were some really bad ones.
What qualifies these wordpress slider and gallery plugins as being kick ass?
They’re either
- Cool looking
- Cool looking while still inexpensive
- Versatile with extensive options
- Simple to setup and use
- Personally recommended for portfolios, product showcases, family photo sharing or featuring recent posts.
- Detailed User Manuals and Good Support
Every website needs visual appeal. Whether it be pictures, sliders, galleries or videos. For sites offering services or products, a professional slider enforces the fact that you’re a pro.
I’ve come across some really wicked plugins that are pretty darn affordable.
Got $10?
WordPress Content Sliders That Rock (And can be used as an Image Only Slider)
SliderVilla has some of the most impressive, while still being affordable, content sliders I’ve ever bought.
So far I’ve bought 3 and I’m going to share them here with you.
The Pinwheel Slider
This is my newest acquisition. $9 (January 2013). Very slick and easy to style. And you can style it from the admin panel without knowing CSS. You can not embed videos into this wordpress content slider but you can convert it to a pure image slider. The slider can be embedded via template tag, shortcode or the widget that comes built in. You can create multiple sliders for multiple pages all with different content, at different sizes, with different styling, etc.
Overall Features of Pinwheel Slider
- Fully Customizable CSS, also you can enter ‘Custom Styles’ right thru settings panel
- Choose Posts and Pages as Featured Posts/Pages on a Single Click
- No Need Of Knowledge of PHP, HTML or CSS, also with some knowledge of CSS you can easily create your own slider stylesheet suitable to your theme.
- SEO Friendly! Readable by search engines
- Slider Preview in admin panel
- Images cropped very nicely to fit into the sizes
- Pick image from content or the custom field or you can also use ‘Featured Image’ WordPress feature
- Remove posts and pages from Pinwheel Slider selectively or remove all the posts from the slider at one go from the settings page itself
- You can reorder the slides, or choose to display the slides randomly
- Option to retain specific html tags in the slider posts
- Slides can be linked to permalink or any other desired URL. Also you can choose to not link some slides to any URL.
- Support through Premium Support Forums
The Thumbel Slider
This has to be my 2nd most favorite slider.Any size you like.
As many or as little thumbs you want below the slider.
Can be used as a pure graphics slider with no text.
As a content slider it can pull your recent posts or from a category.
You can add multiple slides on a page.
Insert using shortcode, template tags or the widget!
When inserting for the first time, on the blog homepage, using the template tag option, here’s the tag:
Instructions for installing to the homepage, is covered in the below video to walk you through implementation and configuration.
Great user Manual.
Here are some more great features.
- Fully Customizable CSS
- Responsive design to support display screens of all sizes including iPad, iPhone and Android Smartphones
- Touchscreen support
- Embed videos inside the Thumbel slider
- Add Lightbox effect on images and videos embedded inside the slider
- Option to show slider content on mouse hover
And Too much more.
Visit the Product Page
. You’ll be amazed.
The Pointelle Slider
For the longest I was envious of a blog because they had this slider and I couldn’t find it. I own it now and had it on a previous blog. having trouble deciding if I should add the Pointelle or the Thumbel to my homepage.
Here is a screenshot from SliderVilla,
but you seriously should check it out the slider here to see it in action.
From Slidervilla …
“Type of Content that can be shown in the Slider
- You can add posts/pages or media images to the slider and embed this custom slider anywhere on your site. You can create multiple sliders with different post/pages/media images and embed them on different pages of your WordPress site. Just remember, on one page, you can embed only one Slider at a time. But different pages can have different Sliders.
- You can display the Posts from any Category in Chronologically reverse order i.e. latest one first.
- You can display the Recent Posts of your WordPress blog in the Slider”
The Pointell Slider is only $9. Check out all the specs
here on the product page
. Detailed user manual with several different styles.
Slidervilla
has other great sliders. But…I haven’t tried them yet, so I’m only recommending the two above.
Galleries
Fancy Gallery
Great For Before and After
At $15 this is a wicked
Fancy Gallery plugin
that offers you the option of having multiple galleries consisting of different and multiple albums and they can be placed all on one page.
When I was looking for a way to display my Website Makeover Gallery and showcase the Before + After designs, I tried maybe 15 sliders. This one, does exactly what I want quickly and keeps me organized. My favorite features are:
- being able to title the pictures
- the shadow box and the option to scroll through the pictures within the shadow box via little thumbnail or arrow
- the twitter and facebook sharing buttons
- the option to expand the picture to get a full size view
If you have multiple albums on one page, let’s say 5 albums, one per client, you’ll only scroll through the images per client. Click on the screenshot to test drive the user interface yourself. The developer offer a step by step tutorial in screencast form too!
The Best WordPress Image Sliders Ever! (And for those who can afford to splurge a little. Seriously)…
Slider Pro
For The Advanced User
This slider is great for homepages . Absolutely loved it! (I’ve used it on a client’s site http://vistaimaginggroup.com.) This is THE
professional slider
I have there. It’s pricey at $25 but I originally installed a copy for a client and had to have it. It’s very versatile, the screenshot shows just a few variables. There are over 100 customizable properties and ten skins. You can also edit the skins if you’re comfortable with css. It’s not a recent posts slider so I only suggest it for portfolio use,product showcase (that will link to the product page if you like) or for sites with multiple pages that you want to attract attention to. For instance, the slides I’ve loaded (you can load much more, my past client has about 15 in their portfolio) all have captions and point to my WordPress Blog Themes Shop. You can also load videos into the slider. There are 100+ transitions too! It’s very advanced, very detailed and very time consuming. Again, I only recommend it for homepages and especially sites that make you money. The $25 is an investment, but well worth it.
Which is my Favorite WordPress Image Plugin?
I have no bloody clue. These are definitely my favorites of all that I’ve tried.
Which one do you like?
By the way, this post took me 6 hours to put together. I always wanted to write one of these, but of course I had to wait until I tried almost every damn wordpress image slider, slideshow and gallery there is. I gotta tell you though, I’ve read through a lot of “Top Plugins” posts and I was aiming to make this the best by offering you everything I know about the plugins. I’d really appreciate it if you can do me a solid and share it via social media.
Disclaimer:
This is not in anyway a sponsored post but I have added affiliate links as an after thought. I figured what the hell, right? If you decide to buy one of these plugins via my link, it will cost you the same and I’ll make a little for my efforts. So I’d like to thank you now if you do purchase through my link and if you don’t purchase, that’s cool, I appreciate you reading my post.
Always a pleasure to read your posts and learn from them. Thanks for the great information Vanita.
Thanks Dave. I’m so happy we’ve connected!
Vanita recently posted..Here’s How I Get Blog Traffic
Dude, it’s like you’re in my head or something! One of my New Year resolutions is to update/enhance my little blog. Thank you for this post, Vanita. I’ve learned so much from you this year!!
Eve recently posted..Looking Back at 2011
aww thank you Eve. That’s high praise and much appreciated.
Vanita recently posted..WordPress Image Sliders And Galleries That Kick Ass
Whoa…
Wait…
Whoa…
This is totally bookmarked.
You rock
Kimberly recently posted..Look For The Girl With The Cracked Smile.
wicked, isn’t it? or should i say, aren’t i? LOL
Hey! Another good post. A picture says more than a thousand words we say here in this place we call The Netherlands. When I decided on what to do with my blog – the hunt is better than the kill – I will look into all that. Awesome stuff and examples!
Jan Bierens recently posted..Facebook Friend? Pfft.
thanks Jan. u know where to find me when you’re ready. always willing to help a buddy.
Yay! Another great post. I’ve been looking to this and thanks for the tips on how to make image sliders in WordPress..
Marnie Byod recently posted..Cabinet Maker
Yes! I’ve been looking for a good gallery and gave up for a while, so thanks for this. Plus, I’m totally loving your Mompreneurs newsletter.
Artchoo recently posted..Are there S’mores at Art Camp?
Thank you girl! I’m happy to hear both! I just made an edit to this post, lol, i only have 30 plugins now
Vanita Cyril recently posted..The Busy Life
Thanks Vanita! Going to check these out – otherwise it’s like feeling in the dark when looking for plugins!
Ann recently posted..Marriage Mini Rut
my pleasure Ann. Slidervilla absolutely impressed me. I really want to add a slider to the homepage, but i’ve got to wait until my ad in the sidebar contract expires, then back to the redesign board. again. lol
Thanks for sharing! I’m off to check these out now!
thank you girl. ya know i love your blog’s design, i can’t see anyway to improve it but i appreciate you checking them out.
I’m thinking about switching to a fixed page as my landing page. Having a slider on there would be the perfect way to ‘show off’ my latest posts – or other stuff.
Back to the drawing board…
Janb recently posted..Why Google needs a Steve Jobs
Jan, i’m just waiting for the contract on the ad in my sidebar to expire and it’s back to the drawing board for me too! i definitely want a slider on the homepage
I love sliders too and I had no idea that you can purchase them separately to add to your blog. PickyKidPix wants a slider she informed me, but her blog is on WordPress.com so you can’t use plugins. What to do?
PragmaticMom recently posted..Little Boy Book Club: The Boy Who Changed the World
Great info as always – motivated me to play with header and plugins
capability recently posted..A Preschool Mom’s Day
thank you girl! your site is definitely moving faster for me
Hi Heidi, I’m familiar with the Oxygen theme listed on theme forest and it is a pain in the butt to hook up and frankly when i was half way through i realized it wasnt what i wanted for a client. I never did take a look at the slider so I can’t tell you if having it above the fold is a good thing or a bad thing. I can tell you that the two content sliders listed above a seo friendly so when your site is crawled, the text within the slides will be indexed as being above the fold. the other plugins on this page are better suited to galleries. thanks for stopping by and reminding me that i need to build an updated version of this post. I’ll add a video on how to tell if a plugin is seo friendly too. thanks.
vanitacyril recently posted..I. Am. Famous.