Removing Metaslider from Cynder & Aurora
Metaslider/slideshows are being phased out of Aurora. Starting June 16, 2026 all new Aurora accounts using Cynder will have Metaslider disabled.
Rationale
Website sliders (or carousels) should generally be avoided because they are statistically ignored by visitors, slow down page load times, and often create poor user experiences.
The Nielson Norman Group, widely respected for its research-based UX guidance, writes about the poor usability of sliders.
The technical director at the University of Notre Dame did a study on the clickthroughs of sliders which shows that only "1% clicked a feature in a slider. Of those, 89% were the first position." 1% of clicks for the most significant object on the homepage is not effective. Furthermore, it shows that users aren’t interacting with the content in the second, third, etc. positions.
Lee Duddell, a UX consultant, writes "Carousels are effective at being able to tell people in marketing or senior management that their latest idea is on the homepage. Use them to put content that users will ignore on your Home Page. Or, if you prefer, don’t use them. Ever.”
Additional Reading
Banner Blindness & Poor Engagement: Multiple studies consistently show that only about 1% of visitors click on a slider, and the vast majority of those clicks happen on the first slide. [1, 2]
Sluggish Page Speed: Large, high-resolution slider images and the extra JavaScript/CSS required to animate them drastically increase your page weight. This harms SEO and mobile performance. [1, 2, 3]
Autoplay Frustration: Moving elements steal control from the user. If they are trying to read or click a specific link, the slide often rotates away, causing immense frustration. [1, 2, 3, 4]
Mobile and Accessibility Issues: Sliders frequently break on mobile screens or interfere with natural scrolling behaviors. They are also notoriously difficult for visually impaired users relying on screen readers to navigate. [1, 2, 3]
Diluted Messaging: By attempting to highlight multiple different promotions, your website ends up lacking one clear, focused call-to-action
Alternative Solutions
Cynder and the block editor have a number of options you can use to better present your content.
Gallery Block - lets you display multiple images, videos, GIFs, or other media files in a gallery‑style layout
Cover Block - Image (or video) used as a background with text and buttons over it
UC Random Image Block - Loads a random image from a chosen set on page refresh
Hero Patterns - Multiple pre-built options to display a hero image