With a nice layer slider you can increase the visual appearance of the website. You might have heard the expression: a picture is worth a thousand words. However this is true, sometimes a picture isn’t enough to tell the whole story, you need text for that.
You might wonder what the main difference between a layer slider and the common responsive image slider is. Well, the answer is both simple and complex. No single image tells the story the way an image and some words do. Words make your layer slider unique, and being unique is a valid goal when you create your website. In fact, a visitor only remembers the special website encounters. Hence you want your website to be this special encounter.
Free Layer Slider template
With Smart Slider 3 you can easily create a layer slider and achieve your goals. You can add as many layers as you want and you can also customize them all without using any code. Would you like to try how simple it is? You won’t lose anything because you can download Smart Slider 3 for free. Give it a chance and create your own layer slider!
What is a Layer Slider?
A Layer Slider is a slideshow which is built up from layers. If you are a designer or have used an image editor, you know a thing or two about layers. The modern image editors use layers which you can design, drag & drop everywhere and customize them. If you create your own website design, each layer will contain a piece of your website.
The City template was built from layers
What is a layer actually?
We can tell that layers are containers which store their content. Each layer has its own type of content you can display using it. This content makes all the difference when it comes to making the slider special. You can add caption, add new button, or even longer text to your slider.
And why are layers useful?
You can change them later without any effects on others and move them if you want. In Smart Slider 3 you can use layers too, which you can fully customize and build your own layer slider.
How to make a Layer Slider in WordPress?
Plan your slider
Choose a Slider plugin which will fit your needs
Put your layers on the slides
Check the result
Publish your ready Layer Slider
Best Free Layer Slider on the Market
Smart Slider 3 is your best choice of creating a free layer slider. If you look around, or have already searched for a slider plugin, you have probably observed something. If you search for a free layer slider plugin, most of them let you add some images, maybe some text. I have good news for you: with this free layer slider plugin you can choose from more layers such as a heading or button, even you can create a YouTube slider.
Already the free version of Smart Slider 3 has all the features to build a unique and colorful layer slider. You can freely use elements that are frequently available in only premium plugins. Customization won’t cost you anything either, you won’t have the impression of having a basic layer slider.
The new way to build a Slider
Next generation visual editor, customizable animations & effects, and access to hundreads of premade templates.
What’s more, in Smart Slider 3 you can find a lot of premade layer sliders which you can easily import from the Template Library. There are ready to use templates, correctly and fully set up, you don’t need any major customization. You can insert unlimited images to improve the appearance of your page, replace the content with your own and you are ready to publish it.
Layer slider example with animated heading
Tell your Story using Layers in Smart Slider 3
In Smart Slider 3 you can choose from a lot of different types of layers. Each layer has a design tab which allows you to choose from preset settings, or style your own. You can change every detail of your layer easily.
Gym slider
If you add a textual layer, you can change the font family, color and size. It might be important to direct the visitor to a new page, so it’s possible to add a link to the layer. Furthermore, text layers can have background color and padding. If you add an image layer, change its text or even its title.
Additionally, you can add custom CSS class and write custom CSS codes to any layer. This is especially useful if you are a developer or if you want a really unique look. You are the one who can tell your story the best, and if you want to tell it right, you express yourself with words. You can add these words to the slider using layers.
The most favored layers to make the slider special
Some people don’t need much more extra content but a nice caption. The easiest way to have a unique caption on your slide is to use the heading layer. You can customize this layer to match the other text on your site. The second most popular layer is the button layer. You may use it to make call to action buttons. People often use the image layer as well. It’s a common usage to upload a social icon and link this image to the social channel.
There are many more layers for you to use in Smart Slider 3, the possibilities to create your own content are endless.
Scene slider template
Two Positions to Fit Your Needs
In Smart Slider 3 you can use two positioning modes to place your layers. Default layers work like a page builder, you can easily drag your layers, and lets you build your slides quickly with great responsive behavior. With Default layers you can design your structure by adding rows and columns like in a lot of page builders.
The other positioning mode is the Absolute, it lets you drag your layers anywhere, and you can put a layer above or below to another. Absolute layers are great to create your imagined layouts and it is useful if you want to put many layers on each other.
However, you can use the two positioning modes by mixing them. If you create the main content via Default layers, and decorate it with Absolute layer, then the responsiveness is guaranteed.
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How about Responsiveness?
Nowadays it is basic to create a responsive website. So I can say that it is an expectation from a plugin to be responsive. Smart Slider 3 is a fully responsive slider plugin, and these are not just empty words, there are a lot of settings which you can reach the best responsive behavior.
As I have written above, with Default layers your can reach a great responsive behavior by default. Don’t be afraid to use a structure, the font-size modifier, and the other responsive settings which are marked with the device icons. Feel free to hide your layers on different devices if you want your slide not to be crowded.
🎓 Check our article to learn how you should build up a responsive slider!
A Carefully Chosen Layer Animation Makes your Slider Powerful
Everyone loves fancy transitions on their website. They help catch and keep the visitor’s attention for as long as possible. When you first add your slider with your content, everything stands still. Every layer is at the position where you have placed it. With a nice little movement, such as layer animation, you can make it move and it makes your layer slider special.
Managing the layer animation on the easy to use timeline
It’s hard to keep track of the layer animations when you can’t see them properly. Smart Slider 3 Pro version has a built-in timeline, it’s visual and easy to use. You can see the layer animations with different colors, also you can adjust the duration and delay of the animation. Clicking on the animation opens up its editor to quickly adjust it if needed.
The timeline has another great feature, it lets you copy and paste animations between different layers. For example, if you have created a complex animation, you can quickly have it on different layers so you don’t need to create the animations all over again and you can save time.
Final Thought
Creating a layer slider is a good way to make your slider unique. Smart Slider 3 is the best choice to create your slider, it is free, fully responsive and you can use a lot of layers on your slides. Thumbnail slider, video slider or landing pages – these are just a part of what you can achieve with this superb plugin!
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.
