Sliders are a versatile tool that allow you to display images and videos to website visitors. They are used on a variety of websites, including online shops, local businesses, and portfolios.
WordPress users are spoiled for choice when it comes to choosing a slider plugin for their website.
10Web’s WordPress slider plugin is an interesting solution that can be used to integrate slides into your WordPress theme or directly into blog posts and pages.
Let’s take a closer look at the plugin and see what it can do.
Creating Slides with Slider WD
Slider WD can be downloaded directly through your WordPress admin area. If you prefer, you can download it from WordPress.org and upload it to your website using the zip file or using a File Transfer Protocol client.
After activating Slider WD, you will see a new menu item in your WordPress admin area. When you click on the “Sliders” link you will be taken to the main sliders page.
A default slider has been set up for you already. This was something I was really pleased to see as it helps you get an understanding of how the plugin works.
Each slider displays the number of slides contained within it and the shortcode and PHP code required to publish the slider on your website.
Along the top of the page you will find options to select all, publish, unpublish, duplicate, export, import, and delete. You will find these buttons useful once you have created a large list of sliders on your page.
The interface for editing sliders is user-friendly. At the top left hand side you can rename your slider and at the top right there are buttons for saving, applying, previewing, exporting, and cancelling.
Your slides are displayed at the top of the page. Additional slides can easily be added and you can pull images from your WordPress media library.
As a simple slider, the free version of Slider WD is fine. It has a couple of features that are useful, such as setting an image watermark and adding an image from a URL.
The pro version adds a lot more useful features. You can embed videos into slides, add videos from YouTube, Flickr, Dailymotion or Vimeo, add blog posts, and edit image thumbnails.
Layers are available in the pro version too. This allows you to place additional layers over your images and videos. You can add text layers, image layers, video layers, social media sharing buttons, and hotspots.
Where Slider WD excels is the settings area. In the settings tab you will find eight sections: Global, carousel, navigation, bullets, filmstrip, timer bar, watermark, and CSS.
The plugin gives you full control over how your slider looks. You can modify the size of your slides, effects, duration of slides, background colours, margins, padding, borders, and more.
Slider WD slides are responsive. Within the navigation menu you will an options for touch navigation, mouse swipe navigation, mouse wheel navigation, and keyboard navigation.
One of my favourite features is the option to apply a text or image watermark. You can define the size of the watermark, its style, its colour, and its position.
As I noted in my review of Instagram Feed WD, 10Web always include an option for uninstalling their WordPress plugins. This allows you to easily remove the tables the plugin adds to your database.
Kudos to the developers for doing this as most WordPress plugins leave a lot of tables behind after you remove them.
You can insert sliders into your posts or pages using the provided shortcode or by using the “Slider WD” button that is added to your WordPress editor. Hardcoding a slider using the provided PHP code is useful if you want to integrate the slider into your home page, header, or footer.
The free version of Slider WD is good, however I feel the pro version is a much better option. In the next section I will expand upon this issue more.
Slider WD Pro
The pro version of Slider WD is very affordable.
The personal license only costs $20 and offers support for one website up to six months. The business license costs $30 and provides support for three websites for one year. The developer license retails at $40 and provides support for an unlimited number of websites for one year.
Going pro unlocks many great features. It offers twenty-six transition effects instead of five, social media sharing buttons, and support for video. It also adds the layers feature and a number of additional effects such as carousel and parallax.
Another cool feature of Slider WD Pro is the demo sliders. These sliders can be downloaded and imported into your website at any time.
Demo sliders provide an excellent starting point for creating your own sliders. There are a good variety of sliders available that showcase all the features of Slider WD.
When I reviewed 10Web’s other WordPress plugin Instagram Feed WD, I noted that while the pro version has some great features, the free version was not restrictive in any way. They had developed a good product that had the right balance between the free and premium versions. The free version had a lot to offer, but the pro version had many great features that encouraged people to upgrade.
Sadly, I feel they did not get the balance with Slider WD right as too many features are only available in the pro version.
I do appreciate that developers need to restrict many features or no one would upgrade to the pro version of Slider WD. Therefore, I can empathise with the difficulty in striking a good balance between what is left in and what is left out.
Plus we should not forget that the pro version of Slider WD can be purchased from only $20.
The problem is that there are a huge amount of slider WordPress plugins available on WordPress.org and the free version does not do enough to stand out in a crowded marketplace. That is not to say the free version of Slider WD is bad because it isn’t. It’s a great little plugin for anyone who is looking to add an image slider to their website.
To rectify this, I would love to see 10Web add some premium features to the free version of Slider WD. For example, they could allow videos to be added to sliders and allow simple text and image layers. This would make the free version a better solution and give users a better idea of what the pro version can do.
Final Thoughts
I hope you have enjoyed this review of Slider WD. I recommend checking out the online demo of the plugin to see an example of the sliders it can create.
All in all, I was pleased with Slider WD. It has a lot of interesting features and a lot of useful customisation options.
My recommendation is to try out the free version. If you like the interface and the simplicity of the plugin, my advice is to upgrade to the premium version so that you unlock features such as layers, video support, and social media sharing.
Thanks for reading.
Kevin