Do you want to add a featured content slider to WordPress but you don’t know how to do it? You’re in the right place. This guide will show you how to easily set up and display the featured content in different ways using a plugin.
What is a Featured Content Slider?
A featured content slider is simply a slider to display featured content. You can use them to display the featured content in an image or video slideshow on your WordPress website. When using them, you can also choose whether or not they transition automatically or based on user input.
A featured content slider is a great option for website owners to highlight their exclusive content. You can add a featured content slider on your WordPress site to display the latest content as well as older but top-rated content or product.
Content sliders make users focus on the content of the slides displaying a catching background wallpaper, the heading, and a small introduction of what the visitor might find inside. The slides have arrows on both sides for the next and previous slides.
Now that we have learned what a feature content slider is, let’s see why you should add a featured content slider to your WordPress site.
Why add a Featured Content Slider to WordPress?
Let’s say you have some exclusive news that you want to show to your visitors through your WordPress website. Or, you have a story that has been the highlight of the month or throw some light on the product of the week. What do you do?
You showcase that unique content of yours on the homepage of your website. Here comes the need to add featured content slider to WordPress sites as it has a distinctive way of arranging those stories and catching the eyes of the visitors.
We can further divide the advantages of using a featured content slider on your website into two major categories.
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Better Presentation of Featured Content
Firstly, it adds to the ergonomics of your website. Tiles and blocks are a bit old-fashioned and boring nowadays. They work fine if your own a decade-old website, right? But now, modern website designs have changed massively.
The content as well as the presentation matter. You might have an excellently written piece of an article but if it is not presented correctly it will lose its worth sooner than later. So, a featured content slider in your WordPress site will introduce the product or the article with a major highlight.
It will also make your website more appealing to visitors.
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Easy Access to Featured Content
Secondly, as a consequence of the first advantage, the number of visitors increases. Nowadays, users love the easy access to everything. A great piece of content without easy access will not get the attention it deserves.
So, when you add featured content slider to WordPress sites, every visitor can look into all the special content you are offering at a quick glance. This way, more people will be entertained and they would surely bookmark your site to visit again and again.
I hope by now you have understood the need for a featured content slider for your WordPress site. Let’s move on and learn how to choose the right plugin and add a featured content slider to WordPress sites.
Things to look for in a Featured Content Slider Plugin
The majority of WordPress themes come pre-packaged with at least a basic level of slider functionality. But you might still need to consider other options like plugins to help you add a featured content slider on your WordPress website.
Using a plugin is the quickest way to add a slider for the featured content and enhance the user experience on your site. In addition to highlighting the most important content on a page, solutions like slider plugins also make it more visually appealing and interactive.
However, if they are not configured correctly, slider plugins can have a negative impact on the site. So, before we move to the process, let’s go through some things to look for in a featured content slider plugin for WordPress.
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Ease of Use
If you’re just starting in web development, you should seek a slider that supports drag-and-drop functionality. This will make it much simpler for you to construct an image slider that caters to your particular requirements.
On the other hand, you might want to go with a slider that has a few more advanced features only if you are an experienced webmaster or a WordPress whiz. These slider plugins were constructed programmatically. So, customizing them will require some understanding of coding.
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Ergonomics and Designs
Not every slider plugin will have the same kinds of sliders in its default installation. Some may just let you construct straightforward image sliders, while others will provide you with a wide variety of alternatives to choose from when it comes to the style and design of your slideshow.
Carousel sliders, video sliders, article sliders, and product sliders are some of the most common forms of sliders used in WordPress websites. Each one is comprised of its own individual characteristics and contributes to your website in a different way.
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Customization
In a manner comparable to what was discussed previously, not all sliders will provide you with the same options for customization. While some will be rigid and will only provide you with premade designs, others will be flexible and will allow you to make changes to almost every aspect of the design.
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Responsiveness
Keep in mind that consumers are accessing your website from more than just their desktop computers. A significant number of users are also accessing it through their mobile devices. This indicates that you will require a slider that is responsive and will appear properly regardless of the type of browser or device that is being used.
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Price
When it comes to selecting a slider plugin for WordPress, price is an essential consideration. Some of them are going to be free, while others are going to charge you for access to the premium features.
By now, you are familiar with the key points which should be considered for the selection of the right plugin to add featured content slider to WordPress site. Next, let’s go through the process of how to use it in detail.
How to add a Featured Content Slider to WordPress
As mentioned already, the easiest way to add a featured content slider to WordPress is by using a plugin. There are a number of plugins in WordPress developed specifically to add featured content to WordPress. However, we will be using the WP Featured Content and Slider for this demonstration.
It is a free plugin allows you to display your featured content slider in a very engagable and responsive manner. It also gives you the option to select from among 20+ grid and slider styles and many different layout options.
In addition to being highly compatible with other plugins, the plugin also ensures that your preferred themes such as Avada and Divi are flawlessly enhanced. The same goes for page builders such as Gutenberg, WPbakery/VC Composer, Siteorigin, Beaver, and Elementor. Similarly, it also supports custom post types to display them along with the sliders.
The first step toward adding a Featured Content Slider is adding its plugin.
1. Install and Activate the Plugin
To add the plugin to your website, you’ll have to install and activate it first.
First, you need to go to your WordPress dashboard and sign in. Next, move your cursor to Plugins in the sidebar menu. When the menu on the side opens, click Add New. From here, you can install the plugin using two methods.
1.1. Upload and install the plugin
The first choice allows you to go to the developer’s website and download the plugin .zip file directly from the plugin site.
Then, click on the Upload Plugin button in the Plugins menu of your WordPress dashboard. Now, upload the .zip file here by clicking on Choose File. After the plugin has been uploaded, click on the Install Now button to install the plugin.
It will take a few seconds for the plugin to be installed. As soon as the plugin is installed, Activate the plugin.
If you need more help regarding this process, you can go through our detailed guide on how to install a WordPress plugin manually.
1.2. Install the plugin through the WordPress Library
You can also install the plugin directly from the WordPress plugin library to your website directly. For that, go to Plugins > Add New from your WordPress dashboard and search for the keywords of the plugin. Just type “WP Featured Content and Slider” into the search bar and the results will be displayed to you.
After you find the plugin, click on the Install Now button to install the plugin.
Once it’s installed, Activate the plugin on your website.
So, we have crossed one big hurdle. Wasn’t that easy? Just keep following and we’ll cruise past the next one as well which is “How to use Featured Content Slider”.
2. Add and Display Featured Content Slider to WordPress
In this section, we will discuss different ways to add featured content to your website.
2.1. Create a Featured Content
To create a post having featured media, firstly, go to Featured Content > Add Content on your Dashboard. This is the new menu that will be added to the dashboard after you activate the plugin.
Now, add the title of your post in the desired box and further add a description of the post in the box below.
Next, you can look to your right, and there you’ll find a block for the featured image. Click on “Set Featured Image” and select the image from your media library or upload it directly from your computer storage.
Lastly, you can also add a featured content icon by clicking “Font Awesome.”
And you are good to publish your post with a featured image.
2.2. Create Categories for the Featured Content
To display multiple contents you need to sort your media into different categories. You can create these categories on the same page.
Just above the Featured image block, there is a block for adding new categories. Firstly, click on the link “+ Add New Category” and the block will expand. Now in the box below, enter a category name and select if it’s a sub-category of another category. Lastly, click on “Add New Category” and you will see a new category created just above with a checkbox as shown in the image below:
2.3. Add the Slider using WordPress blocks
There is an easy way to add a featured content slider to WordPress using the Gutenberg block editor. Just open the editor for the page where you want to add the featured content slider
Add a new block here and in the list of Gutenberg blocks, look for “Featured Content Slider”. There will be several other content-featuring options available in blocks if you type “feature” in the search box including Featured Category, Featured Product, Featured Content Grid, Post Featured Image and last but not the least Featured Post.
When you add the block of the featured content slider, you will see options that are relevant to that block on the right side of the page. You can select the designs and layouts from General, Slider and Query Parameters from the sidebar.
2.4. Display the Featured Content Slider to WordPress using Shortcodes
If you want to display your featured content with some more variation, the plugin does come with a number of shortcodes that you can see as well.
[featured-content] – Shortcode for featured content grid
[featured-content grid=”2″ design=”design-1″] – Decide design and grid parameters
[featured-content post_type=”featured_post”] & [featured-content-slider post_type=”featured_post”]
[featured-content-slider] – Shortcode to add featured content slider to WordPress
Let’s add the shortcode for the featured content slider to WordPress. Enter the shortcode at the desired location on the page where you want to display the featured content slider.
After that, all you have to do is update the page or the post, and you’ll get the featured content slider on your site.
That’s it! This is how you add a featured content slider to WordPress.
Bonus: Set and Display Featured Products in WooCommerce
You’re already familiar with adding featured content and sliders to WordPress. But if you have a WooCommerce store, displaying featured products can also be very helpful to you. We’ll show you exactly how to do so as a bonus in this section.
Featured products are the products that you want to highlight in your online store. They include the most popular items that have the best margins in most cases. Similarly, you can also highlight popular, trending, new, seasonal, or sponsored products as featured products.
Setting WooCommerce featured products can really boost your sales. But before displaying them, you need to make them featured products in WooCommerce.
Set featured products in WooCommerce
You can easily set a product as featured from your WooCommerce dashboard in multiple ways. But the most convenient approach is through the product edit page. You can also create a new featured product with this method.
Just go to Products > Add New to add a new product from your WooCommerce dashboard. If you want to edit an existing product, go to Products > All Products. Then, search for the product using the top-right search bar and click on Edit for the product to be featured.
You’ll be redirected to the edit product page, where you’ll see product catalog visibility. Change visibility by pressing Edit. Check “This is a featured product” and click OK. If it’s a new product, add details and Publish it.
Simply click Update if you’re working with an already existing product. It’s done! That product will now be prominently featured on your website.
Display WooCommerce Featured Products
Displaying the featured products is the next step after setting them up. Again, there are plenty of ways to display featured products. But the most effective approach is by using a shortcode.
You can use WooCommerce shortcodes to show off your store’s featured products on any page or post.
To display the featured products on your website, you can use the following shortcode:
Additionally, you have the option to alter the way the featured products are displayed based on your preferences. Let’s take a look at this shortcode, for example:
Using this shortcode, a three-column layout will show six featured products per page.
You can also have a look at our guide on how to display featured products in WooCommerce if you want to learn about more ways to set and display them. Make sure that you have set up WooCommerce properly on your website by using one of the compatible WooCommercec themes. This will avoid any theme or plugin conflicts on your website.
Conclusion
Now that you have gone through this article, one thing must be clear in your head. You need to add a featured content slider to your WordPress site to maximize not only the ergonomics of your store or website but also the sales and hence the profits.
Understanding the need for a featured content slider is one thing and knowing the right choice for your work is another. Further in the article, we tried to set up criteria to look for the best match for the requirements. The criteria included:
- Ease of Use
- Ergonomics & Designs
- Customization
- Responsiveness
- Price
Next, we looked into some of the best plugins available that fulfill the above criteria for the right choice of Featured Content Sliders.
Lastly, the article put light on the step-by-step process of installing and activating the plugin. To get the best out of our selected plugin, several options to add a featured content slider to WordPress were discussed. These included:
- Creating featured content
- Creating categories of featured content
- Adding the slider using WordPress blocks.
- Displaying the slider using shortcodes
The perks of adding a Featured Content Slider to your WordPress site are endless and as you have learned in this post, it is not the most difficult thing to do in this world.
So can you add a slider for featured content on your website? Please let us know in the comments.
Meanwhile, here are some more articles that can be helpful for you to customize your website: