Many people use YouTube videos in their WordPress site, because they can call the visitors’ attention and can make a visual impact. It is simple, because YouTube hosts the video, you don’t need to download it and upload to your site. All you need is to copy the video’s link or the video id, and in Smart Slider 3 you can easily create a nice looking, fully responsive YouTube slider for free.
Before I explain what you need to know about a YouTube slider, you can check the video slider Examples and import them from the Template Library.
A YouTube slider gives a nice visual impact
A YouTube Slider is great to make something noticeable. With motion pictures you can make a lot more, than using CSS and JavaScript codes. So a video can have a big influence on the design of your website.
You can combine the YouTube layer’s functionality with the autoplay of your slider. The autoplay can stop when the video plays and continue when it’s done. It gives a nice visual impact to the visitor and makes the user watch the video. The video player is fully customizable, you can hide the play icon or the controls, or you can even give a default volume to it.
YouTube slider template with Thumbnails
You can not only use a YouTube video as a layer, in Smart Slider 3 Pro there is an option to open your YouTube video in a lightbox. With a lightbox slider you can save space, improve your loading time and make an interaction with the visitor. You can trigger the lightbox from a play icon and the visitor will click on that to watch the YouTube video.
The new way to build a Slider
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Smart Slider 3 is a responsive WordPress slider plugin which you can easily create unlimited number of YouTube sliders with. If you want to create a video slider, simply create a blank slide first. Then from the Add panel you can select the YouTube, Vimeo or Video layer and enter the URL you want to load.
The best usage for a video gallery is to create a thumbnail slider. The thumbnails help you navigate to other slides, because you can see a small preview of the slides. And the video thumbnails can have a small play icon on them which lets the visitor know about the video on the slide.
Some tips to create a stunning YouTube slider
Fullwidth Video Slider
If you use the YouTube layer, let the users make the choice to handle the videos: play, pause or mute them.
If you automatically start your YouTube slider, set the volume to mute.
Have you ever visited a website which started to “scream” on your speaker? There is nothing more annoying when you go to a website and it starts to play music or other sounds. And because of the browsers’ autoplay handling you should mute the videos, too.
You can create a YouTube slider gallery where your goal is that the visitor watches the videos, but you can use it as a design element as well.
Free Video Slider
Have the design of the video reflected the design of your website as everything you see is connected. If you don’t have one that you think would be okay, search for “royalty free videos” on the internet. There are tons, and a lot of them are really nice looking, so I’m sure, you will find one or more appropriate ones to your website.
So if you would like to use a YouTube video for your design, you can download a royalty free video, upload it on your channel, and use it.
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Most important settings of the YouTube layer
Cover image: Smart Slider 3 creates automatically a cover image for your YouTube layer from the link you gave it, but if you want another image to appear, you can upload an image which will cover your YouTube video. And if your video starts, the cover image will disappear.
Volume: If you want your video not to start with the default volume, you can change this value. And if you want to autoplay your slider because of the browser’s limitation you should mute the video.
Start/End time: You can set the Start and End time, which you can set when the video should start and end.
Centered: This option can be useful if the video and the slider ratio are different. With this setting you can set the video to be centered and cover the slide. This option can also be useful if you want to focus on the center of the video on your phone.
YouTube layer settings in the free version of Smart Slider 3
Controls: You can hide the controls and the time bar from the bottom of the video.
Autoplay: You can set the videos to start automatically but you should take care that you have to mute the video, because some browsers have a limitation and the video can’t play if the video isn’t muted.
YouTube generator
Do you have a YouTube channel? Have you ever thought that you display your videos in a slider, and the content will refresh automatically? With Smart Slider 3 Pro you can create dynamic sliders as well. You can even create a YouTube slider with the YouTube generator which shows the videos of your channel.
If your videos are not on your channel, you can display search results of a certain keyword. The YouTube dynamic slide generator will automatically update your slider after the given time. This means your YouTube slider will be up to date without you having to make any changes.
On the dynamic slides you can use variables which will change. So for example you can put a dynamic url on your layer which will navigate you to the actual video.
Limitation of creating a YouTube slider
Older mobile devices and tablets have a limitation, that is you can’t autoplay videos on them. This limitation happens because of the common usage of mobile internet. On mobile devices only a user’s action can start a video in your YouTube slider. Because of this, even if you set your YouTube video to play automatically, it won’t start until the user taps on the play button. But the latest browsers and devices support autoplaying videos on them, if your video is muted.
Also it’s worth mentioning that YouTube notes your latest volume setting on its own site. If the user muted the video on YouTube, YouTube will automatically play the video without sound and you can’t override that.
Final Thought
A YouTube Slider is great choice to make something noticeable, it calls the visitors’ attention and makes your page more powerful. And the best is that the YouTube layer is available on the Free version of Smart Slider 3! Give it a try, use our sample sliders or create a new version one. If you have any questions about how to create a YouTube slider with this WordPress plugin, leave a comment below or write us a support ticket!
I’m Bernadett Toth and I’m a member of Nextend‘s support team. I have two dogs, in my free time I teaching them. Besides that I often ride a bike, watching movies or reading.
