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A slideshow can add a dynamic look to your small business website. That’s for sure.
Slideshows come in many different shapes and sizes and often display either new or featured content from your small business WordPress site.
But choosing the right slideshow to feature recent content, images, or videos can be a bit daunting.
Luckily, we’ve taken the liberty of sorting through many of these plugins for you and are presenting our favorites:
Simple Slideshow Manager
As it states, this is a simple slideshow that you can add to your WordPress site. The plugin allows you to implement more than one slideshow on your site, too. After you install this plugin into the right directory, you can access its controls from your WordPress dashboard.
In addition to images, videos from YouTube and Vimeo can be added as slides, too.
Meteor Slides
Meteor Slides gives you a little more flexibility in design and features several more sliding animations for your slideshow. This slideshow, too, allows you to place more than one slideshow on your small business’ WordPress site.
It is also mobile-ready. According to the plugin’s page at WordPress, all Meteor Slides embeds are touch-responsive.
WP Slideshow Posts
If you want to feature your most recent posts on your WordPress site, this is a handy plugin that offers some attractive design options. The posts you want to feature, including a title, summary and featured image, are placed in a slide. This is a good plugin to stick at the top of your homepage to feature more than one post.
The plugin also features a small, text-only “Breaking News” bar that can be placed on your small business’ website, too. This is a good way to feature even more content from your site that you want your readers to see first.
Combo Slideshow
The Combo Slideshow plugin for your WordPress site allows you to place images or posts into one of three pre-designed templates. These slideshows can be placed on your site’s pages or at the end of posts using a shortcode or widget code.
One nice feature of the Combo Slideshow plugin allows you to automatically feed new content into a slideshow by setting it to update with content from select Categories on your site.
Flickr Set Slideshows
If you upload a lot of images to Flickr, you’ll want to check out this plugin for your WordPress site. This slideshow allows you to embed native Flickr images into a slideshow on your WordPress site. It also requires you to connect your Flickr and WordPress accounts.
Once your accounts are synced, you’ll be able to simply choose which images to include in a slideshow. That slideshow can be placed on any of your site’s pages or posts.
Slideshow Gallery
This is a Javascript slideshow option for your WordPress site. The plugin can embed custom slides, galleries, posts, and other images from your WordPress site into a slideshow. These slideshows can be customized in size and there are several attractive designs pre-loaded with the plugin.
Promotion Slider
This plugin is ideal for businesses offering multiple deals to their website visitors. After you install Promotion Slider, you can access its interface through the WordPress dashboard. There, you can customize and upload promotions or featured products that you’d like to appear on the Promotion Slider.
These slideshows can be placed on your site’s pages or posts with a simple shortcode. Businesses that sell ads on their site will be able to take advantage of this plugin’s rotating banner option, too.
WordPress Content Slide
Changing the size, content, and style are some of the features of this plugin for your WordPress site. These slideshows can be placed on any pages or posts on your site too.
WP-Cycle
This plugin allows you to post images from articles on another website. The plugin finds a featured image from the URL you provided in the WP-Cycle Admin panel and displays it on your slideshow.
Page Flip Image Gallery
This plugin is really designed for your mobile device readers. Your slideshows can be navigated like any other.
The hallmark of this plugin is that when your readers are scrolling through a slideshow on your page, they’ll see a page-flipping animation. This one plugin feature should add a little more intrigue for readers of your site.
Black Post Slider
This slideshow plugin is useful for featuring select posts and pages from your WordPress site. Titles of the posts you select appear alongside featured images on those posts. All the titles are visible to your site’s visitors. Despite the name, the slider can be displayed in several different colors, not just black.
This plugin also allows you to create multiple post sliders.
MetaSlider
This is a highly-rated plugin available for WordPress sites. It features four different and stylish templates from which to choose. You can select images to be featured in the slides from the WordPress Media Gallery on your site.
A “Pro” version of this slider plugin is available for purchase, too. That premium version allows you to add YouTube and Vimeo videos to your slides.
Full Width Slider
This slideshow plugin displays across the full width of your visitors’ viewing screens. The sliders are device responsive, so it will know whether someone is visiting your site on their smartphone, tablet, or laptop.
Titles and links can be added to any slide. And a single slider can be shown in different parts of your site.
Wow Slider
If a simply designed slider is not something you’re looking for, Wow Slider is an option to consider. There are numerous design templates available with this plugin, all with various visual effects to transition between your slides.
The Wow Slider plugin claims it’s point-and-click friendly for the uninitiated to a WordPress dashboard.
Crab Ultimate Slider
Crab Ultimate Slider allows you to pull from up to five sources for material to include as slides in its slideshow templates. This plugin allows you to pick from posts, pages, and images already published or uploaded to your site. It also allows you to incorporate feeds from your social networks. And if you use Woo Commerce to sell your products, they can be included, too.
This is a premium plugin available for your WordPress site. The cost is $15.
Easing Slider Lite
The Easing Slider Lite plugin features a simple design. It’s a good choice for someone who wants their images to stand out instead of the slideshow interface.
Despite its simplicity, there are customization options available to control how the slideshow is seen and used by your site’s visitors.
Cyclone Slider 2
This slideshow plugin should be considered by any small business owner because its unique feature is a “testimonial” slide. This allows you to feature feedback you’ve received from customers and clients in a specially designed slide. Cyclone Slider 2 also supports custom HTML and YouTube and Vimeo videos in slides.
Easy Rotator for WordPress
Easy Rotator allows you to place slideshow or rotation widgets on your site. These slideshows can be shown where the main copy of posts and pages appears or as a widget on your WordPress theme.
Images can be retrieved from your WordPress media library as well as your local drives and even featured images from recent posts to your site.
Master Slider
This is a touch-based slideshow plugin for your WordPress site. It is a good plugin to consider if you’re focusing on your business’ mobile site.
It features a bevy of customization options, all of which can be done through drag-and-drop interactions.
Master Slider is another premium plugin. A single license to use this plugin costs $25.
Soliloquy Lite
This plugin features attractive designs and allows you to create as many sliders as you wish with an infinite number of slides in each. More sliders can be created using a custom post type. Those posts can be automatically populated on new sliders than placed on your site.
While the Lite version features a lot of options, the premium version of Soliloquy also supports YouTube and Vimeo embeds. A license to use the premium version starts at $19 for individuals on one site.
Smooth Slider
The makers of this plugin say you can have a new Smooth Slider slideshow on your site in 50 seconds. Sliders can be created to display recent posts, featured posts and images, or even category-specific posts.
Slide Deck 2 Lite Responsive Content Slider
Want to grab content from your Pinterest boards, your WordPress site, or Flickr galleries and feature them on a slideshow on your site? This plugin – in the free or premium version – is worth a look.
Premium users can draw from even more sources for content to fill slides, such as Facebook. These sliders can be placed in the template of your site or in posts and pages you add.
Wide Showcase Slider
This is another slideshow that encompasses a visitor’s entire screen. These slideshows featuring your images and other content can be placed via shortcode into posts and pages on your site. Interestingly, the slideshows can also be set as your site’s homepage.
The sleek design and enhanced customization options carry a price tag, though. A license to use this plugin costs $15.
Posts Slider
Posts Slider is a simple slideshow option for your WordPress site that’s designed especially for mobile users. Your blog’s recent activity can be added to any slider you create but other images and featured content can be added to these slideshows as well.
Portfolio Slideshow
Portfolio Slideshow can display multiple formats, including a full-screen image gallery for mobile visitors to your site. Images to be featured in this plugin can be drawn from your Media Library on your WordPress site.
Metro Slider
This slideshow option differs a bit from others in this collection. Metro Slider features what’s called an “animation tile” that allows you to show different images in the same spot wherever you place these slideshows. That means all the images you choose to include in a slideshow can be shown in the same spot.
A license to begin using Metro Slider on your site costs $14.
Easy WordPress Parallax
Easy WordPress Parallax features a lot of customization options. And no advanced skills are needed to create slideshows through this plugin. Transition animations are just some of the design options available to those who choose this for a slideshow on their site. Using shortcode, these slideshows can easily be placed into posts and pages.
Polaroid Slider
If you want to feature an image or photo gallery on your site, this is definitely worth a look. Images to be featured on slides will appear as if they were photographs and become animated when a visitor mouses over them.
Filter effects can be added to photos from within the WordPress dashboard. This is another premium plugin. A license to use it costs $15.
Ultimate 3D Carousel
This plugin doesn’t fall short on aesthetics and certainly would add a dynamic look to your website. Ultimate 3D Carousel is designed to create as the title suggests: 3D carousel slideshows.
These slideshows are fully mobile responsive. Custom slideshows can be created from Categories on your WordPress site.
Ultimate 3D Carousel is a premium plugin that costs $15.
Image Collage Photo via Shutterstock
Mike Poynton
Very nice post! It’s all about images on websites and blogs, and slideshows are like an image on steroids. I personally use Meteor Slides because of it’s mobile friendliness. All images scale no matter what device is being used to view the site. It’s a bit cumbersome on the back end adding slides one-by-one. And you have to size them properly. But the end result is foolproof and works well on all MAC/PC, tablet AND mobile.
anne
Thanks for sharing this post! It helps a lot to a blogger like me. Choosing the best slideshow plug-ins will make my blog eye catching.
Aira Bongco
Now that’s a list. I have always love sliders in WordPress blogs as it shows all the featured content in one fascinating way – by having them automatically slide. The movement catches my attention and instantly draws my eye to it.
Tammi Young
Wow! Thank you for the thorough list. It should be fun to try the different slide methods. Currently using Metaslider on one website and love it! Consumers love visually appealing photos and interesting images with their content. Tammi
Joshua Sophy
Thanks for all the comments. Where were these lists when I was wasting hours looking for about a quarter of these for my personal blogs? Heck, where were these slideshow plugins back then? It’s nice having so many options nowadays. We’re truly entering a golden age of blogging.
I would like to recommend sliderCat, it’s simple, free and quite powerful slideshow with css 3 animations and lot of options like paid sliders… you can download it from wordpress: https://wordpress.org/plugins/slidercat/
Michael Amaral
Thank you for putting together some really useful plugins list.
I also want to recommend you to have a look at another WordPress slider plugin named Avartan Slider. It supports touch navigation that you have never experienced before. Also, included 150+ slides examples and 50+ pre-built sliders.
Take a look: https://bit.ly/2Y3c5Jh