Meta Slider
- Musa Jatkowski
- Sarah Nguyen (Deactivated)
- Yi Zhang
Meta Slider is the primary slideshow tool for Aurora. It can be accessed from the left-hand menu on your Dashboard.
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To add a new slider, click the + New at the top of the screen.
Rename the slider by modifying the Title.
Click the +Add Slide button to start adding slides.
Types of Slides
On the left-hand side of the Add Slide window, there is a menu with different types of slides that can be added to a Meta Slider.
Image
The most common type of slide is an Image slide. For this slide, the user must either choose an image from their Media Library or upload a new image. Remember to add Alternative Text. The Media Library is divided into 3 options – Images, Audio, or Videos.
Vimeo/YouTube
Both Vimeo and YouTube are sites that host videos. For both of these slide types, the user must add a video URL from Vimeo or YouTube, respectively, and that video will be embedded into the slide.
External URL
This slide type is used if the user wants to embed an image located elsewhere on the web. To use this slide type, the user must click Add to slider before they can insert the image URL.
Post Feed
This slide type embeds posts into the slider. Like the External URL slide type, the user must click Add to slider before they can choose which posts are displayed.
Under the slide's Display Settings tab users can choose how many posts will be displayed (Post Limit), and each post displayed will have its own slide. Through Display Settings, users can also choose how the posts are ordered. If the user only wants posts of a certain category, the user may choose this under the slide's Taxonomy tab. Only posts with a Featured Image can be displayed.
Layer Slide
To create an image slide with layers, such as text, links, and more, add a Layer Slide. Like the Image slide type, the user must either select an image from the Media Library or upload one. Once the slide is added to the slider, the user can click Launch Layer Editor under the General tab of the slide in order to add/edit layers. The above image shows the layer edit screen.
For more information, view the layer slides guide on the Meta Slider official website.
Common Settings
There are many settings through which a user can customize their slideshow. Here is a breakdown of some of the more commonly utilized options available:
Navigation — Users can opt to have different types of navigation displayed below their slider to make it easier for viewers to get to a specific slide. However, there is also the option to hide the navigation altogether, which may be a better option for a slideshow consisting only of images. Users can also opt to display left and right arrows on their slider as navigation.
Slide Delay — Located in the Advanced Settings, the slide delay determines how long each slide is shown before moving onto the next. If any slides have captions, users should be aware of how long it takes to read these captions and alter the delay speed accordingly.
Stretch — The Flex, R., and Nivo sliders all have the option under Advanced Settings of 100% wide output. If this box is checked, it means that the slider will grow to fit the space it is in if necessary, even if the space is wider than its set width.