Do you run a WordPress website that is constantly publishing new content or selling new products? A dynamic slider might be just the design element you need to help you save time and ensure your content is always fresh for your site visitors.
If you’ve been thinking about adding a dynamic slider to your WordPress site, this post is for you. We’ll look at how you can add one to your site with the Smart Slider 3 plugin, along with examples to inspire you.
What is a Dynamic Slider?
A dynamic slider is a type of slider that automatically pulls in content from a particular source, such as a YouTube channel, WordPress blog, WooCommerce store, and more. For example, If you run a travel blog, you might want to display your latest blog posts on your homepage. With a dynamic slider, you can choose to pull in content from your WordPress site and display a slideshow of your latest posts — all without having to touch jQuery, HTML, JS or CSS.
Similarly, a photographer might want to dynamically display photos pulled from a specific folder, and a WooCommerce store owner might want to display a carousel of products on sale.
The new way to build a Slider
Next generation visual editor, customizable animations & effects, and access to hundreads of premade templates.
For example, with Smart Slider 3 you can generate dynamic content from a range of different sources, including:
WordPress web pages, posts, and custom post types
WooCommerce products
The Events Calendar
Facebook
YouTube
Vimeo
RSS
Dynamic sliders are just that—dynamic. That means you only have to create your slider once with a WordPress plugin and the content displayed will always be automatically updated for you. You can set and forget. It also means you can focus on publishing great content or finding the best products for your online store without having to worry about updating your slider.
Get on board! Join our 142,416 subscribers!
Get our latest news, tutorials, guides, tips & deals delivered to your inbox.
No spam. No charge. Just curated emails.
4 Impressive Examples of Dynamic Sliders
Let’s take a look at some examples of dynamic sliders to inspire your next project.
1. Dynamic Post Slider
This kind of dynamic slider lets you display your latest WordPress posts using your featured images as the background thumbnail. When you choose to dynamically generate content from your WordPress blog or Joomla articles, it means when a visitor land on your site the slider will automatically display your latest posts. The first slide will show your newest post. That means you can focus on publishing great content without having to worry about manually updating your slider.
2. Dynamic Image Slider
Dynamic sliders are ideal for photographers, designers, and creatives who have image-heavy websites. With a dynamic slider, you can select a specific folder in the slide settings as the source of images for your slider. That means when you add new images or remove some, your slider will automatically update to pull only images that are saved in the folder.
3. WooCommerce Product Slider
Dynamic product carousels are a popular design element used by ecommerce sites because they let you display multiple product items in a confined space. For example, Amazon users several different sliders to display every product on its homepage. With Smart Slider 3, you can create dynamic sliders that automatically update product sliders with items from your WooCommerce store. Best of all, your slider will look and work great on mobile devices, ensuring shoppers can easily swipe through your products.
4. YouTube Slider
A YouTube slider is a great way to make a visual impact on your visitors with a video player from your YouTube channel. What’s great about dynamically generating content from YouTube is that you don’t need to upload video to your website — you can host it on YouTube and pull it directly from your account. All you need to do is to copy your 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.
How to Create a Dynamic Slider with Smart Slider 3
Creating a dynamically changing slider is easy with Smart Slider 3. Just follow this 5-step guide and create your own dynamic slideshow.
1. Create a dynamic slide
If you have an existing slider or you’ve created a new one, you can add a dynamic slide to them. This slide will automatically refresh if your source has a new content. You should set the number of how many dynamic slides you want to display in the slider, and set up the generator.
2. Set up your generator
You can choose from a lot of sources. In the free version of Smart Slider 3 you can create a Post slider from your WordPress posts or Joomla articles but if you have the Pro version, you can choose from 20 sources in WordPress and 27 sources in Joomla.
3. Design your slider
If you want to create a unique slider, now you can create your own design. Also in Smart Slider 3, you can import more predefined slider examples which you can use in your dynamic slide. All you need is to copy the layout and paste it into your dynamic slide.
If you want to have dynamically changing content, you should set variables. Where you don’t use variables, you will have a static layer.
5. Publish the slider
Finally, you can publish your slider, use its shortcode or create a Gutenberg block. And your slider will appear in the front end, and it will automatically refresh.
Wrapping Up
When you want to create a slider that features your latest content, you can’t go wrong with a dynamic slider plugin. Best of all, they’re really easy to implement with Smart Slider 3. All you need to do is select your dynamic generator source and use the provided shortcode to add your slider to your site.
I hope this guide has helped you learn more about dynamic sliders. If you have any questions about how to create a responsive slider that generates content dynamically with Smart Slider 3, leave a comment below!
Raelene Morey is the Chief Bird at Words By Birds , an agency that helps WordPress businesses make better content. Computer science grad turned newspaper journalist and ex-managing editor at WPMU DEV. Raelene has been developing WordPress sites for over 10 years.
