Add content to Media Library

It is easy to create a new image slide show with Weaver Show Sliders. You can easily define which images your slider will use. You can use the built-in WordPress Media Library Gallery tool to specify multiple images at once. You can also specify a single image per post – selecting regular posts, or images specified in the new Slider Posts post type. This tutorial will demonstrate how to use a gallery.

No matter how you define a slider, the first step is to add the content you want in the slide show. The easiest way to do that is load your images into the standard WordPress Media Library. For a uniform sized slider appearance, your slides should be the same size and orientation. But you can mix in images of different sizes and orientations and the slider will adjust to show them all.

Create new Slider Post

Once you have your images added to the Media Library, you can define a standard WordPress gallery that includes the images you want in the slide show.

The first step for this is to create a new Weaver Slider Posts post that will include the gallery. Open the Dashboard Slider Posts : New Slider Post page. Show Sliders includes this new custom post type to make it easy to define posts to specify which images to include.  You can use a meaningful title for this Show Post. For example, you could call it “Colorado”. You will use the title slug in Step 3., so don’t  make it too long.

Don’t close the post editor page yet.

Media Library Create Gallery

The next step is to define a [ gallery ] shortcode that will be inserted into ShowPosts post. You should have the Slider Post editor open.

Click the Add Media button at the top of the editor window. This will open the Media Library page.

Next click the Create Gallery selection at the top left. This opens a window with all your  Media Library images. Click to select the images you want in the slide show. You can sort image order now at the bottom of the Create Gallery window,  or any time later from the post editor.

When you’re done picking your images, click the Create a new Gallery button.

Edit, and Insert Gallery into Slider Post

After you click the Create a New Gallery button you will then see the Edit Gallery page. This page gives you the opportunity to add more images, drag-and-drop the order, change image Titles, Captions, and Descriptions (which can optionally be displayed in the slider with the images if defined).

Now you can click the Insert gallery button, and a [ gallery ids=”200,202,210,…” ] shortcode will be inserted into the Show Posts post. You can now Publish the slider post.

Note that once the gallery short code is added to a Page or Post, it will display as a large, blank gallery “icon”. You can click the icon, and Edit and Delete buttons will be displayed in the upper left. Use the Edit button to edit the gallery – add new images, delete images, and change the sort order.

Define New Slider

So far, you’ve just defined the slider content. The next step is to actually define a slider.

You can define as many sliders as you want, each with different content, and each with a different name. It can simplify things if you use the same name for the Slider Posts post that defined the gallery, and the corresponding Slider definition – e.g., “Colorado”.

To define a slider, open the dashboard Weaver Posts/Slider admin page, and open the Sliders tab. In the Select Slider box, enter the name of the slider (Colorado) in the “Enter name for new slider” box, and click the Create New Slider button.

Required Slider Options

Now you can select the options for the kind of slider you want to create, and various other options. There are four required options for each slider you define:
1. Slider Type – will use the default Fader for this example
2. Paging – this will page through the slider. You can use simple dots, or a thumbnail based pager.
3. Slider Content – images or posts. Use images for this example.
4. Slider Filter – a way to specify what content to use. There is an alternative “Quick Option” to use a “Slider Post” post – just like we just defined. So put colorado in that box.
There are other options you can experiment with later, but now click Save Slider Options.

Add Slider shortcode to Post

Once you’ve created a slider definition, you can insert the slider content anywhere you can use a shortcode. This includes standard Pages and Posts, as well as Text Widgets (using an include option to allow Text Widgets to support shortcodes). Some themes (such as Weaver Xtreme) allow you to insert shortcodes other places, including the header area.

Show Sliders includes many more options that allow you to specify different widths, control timing of slides, support Video in sliders, and much more. Show Sliders gives you more control over the appearance and content of your sliders than any other slider plugin.