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Home » The Famous Blog » SlideDeck 2.1 Review, Best Video and Image Sliders For WordPress

SlideDeck 2.1 Review, Best Video and Image Sliders For WordPress

August 27, 2012 - Last Modified: March 28, 2013 by Tom Ewer 1,402

SlideDeck
  • Editor Rating
  • Rated 5 stars
  • Spectacular
$$49
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  • SlideDeck
  • Reviewed by: Tom Ewer
  • Published on: August 27, 2012
  • Last modified: March 28, 2013

Get SlideDeck

Content sliders are all the rage these days, having achieved near-ubiquitous status as a User Experience (UX) tool for websites and blogs.

And as with any online application that experiences a sharp rise in popularity, you are likely to see far more examples of poor sliders than good.

In much the same way as Adobe Flash took off in the late 1990s, a lot of web masters have jumped on the slider bandwagon without much thought as to how they can benefit the end user.

Which leads me neatly onto Digital Telepathy – a UX and web design agency based in California. They are the developers of SlideDeck – the product that I am reviewing today.

With their UX expertise, have they been able to produce a slider that is worthy of inclusion in any WordPress blog?

Let’s find out!

Just a Slider?

To the uninitiated, a content slider might just be a slider, but that would be doing SlideDeck a disservice.

The vast majority of slider applications available offer only the most basic functionality – typically text laid over an image. Whilst this can be fine for certain simple applications, Digital Telepathy identified a clear gap in the market for a fully-featured slider application.

And when I say fully-featured, I really mean it.

I can confidently say that SlideDeck offers just about every element of functionality that you could possibly hope for from a slider.

This is something we will go into far more detail shortly, but rest assured that SlideDeck is not like any other content slider application that I am certainly aware of. It is one of a kind.

In a nutshell, it’s awesome. But I don’t want you to take my word for it – let’s dig into the finer details.

SlideDeck Version 2.1

SlideDeck has been around for well over two years. What this means is that you are dealing with a very well-formed piece of software. During the testing process I didn’t uncover a single bug (something that any free plugin user will no doubt feel rather refreshed by).

The age of the application also means that it is absolutely packed with features. With the advent of version 2.1

[box]I honestly can’t think of any additional functionality that I would like to see included (although I’m sure the boys over at Digital Telepathy will think of something).[/box]

So what can SlideDeck actually do?

In a nutshell, it allows you to create any number of slides, and customize both the design and content of those slides to an extremely fine level of detail. That brief description essentially reveals SlideDeck’s full functionality, but there is far more to it than initially meets the eye.

Custom Content Slides

SlideDeck’s basic functionality enables you to create slides with custom content. That includes text, HTML, images and video. There are no real restrictions within those confines – anything that you can create on a webpage, you can recreate within a slide.

SlideDeck

The above is an example of a simple text slide. Although you can use HTML to customize the text as you see fit, SlideDeck comes complete with various inbuilt customization options, such as the multi-column layout pictured. The text slide feature also comes complete with a WYSIWYG editor:

SlideDeck

Whilst custom slides are all well and good, if you were to grab yourself a copy of SlideDeck and only use that feature, you would be robbing yourself of some seriously cool features.

Dynamic Content

Anyone who has been blogging for more than a few minutes is aware of the power of social media.

The simple fact is that if you effectively utilize social media, you can expect your blog to grow far quicker than if you didn’t. Gaining a foothold in Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and so on can make a huge difference.

One of the key issues is integrating your various “outposts” with your blog. As much as you want to drive people back to your blog from your social media accounts, you also want to lead your readers to those same accounts so that they sign up (which enables you to engage with them for as long as they follow you).

There are many ways in which you can better integrate social media with your blog, but SlideDeck offers a particularly effective method with its “Dynamic Source” feature, which allows you to integrate the following content sources into slides:

slidedeck socal media sources

  • Twitter
  • YouTube
  • RSS
  • Instagram
  • Dribbble
  • Google+
  • Dailymotion
  • Vimeo
  • Pinterest
  • 500px
  • Flickr
  • Google Plus Images

Creating dynamic source sliders is a piece of cake – each service is beautifully integrated. Take this Twitter feed slider I set up:

SlideDeck

This was achieved with just a few clicks and the insertion of my Twitter username.

The potential applications here are enormous. For instance, you could include a preview of your YouTube channel as a sidebar widget on your blog:

SlideDeck

I could go on, but I think you get the idea.

Lenses and Customization

You may have noticed that each of the mockups I have shown have had a different look and feel. This is down to one of SlideDeck’s best features – what they call “lenses”. These are effectively skins that you can apply to your slides.

There are nine lenses in total, each with their own unique style:

SlideDeck Lenses

Get SlideDeck

Selecting a lens is as simple as clicking on whichever option you prefer. The preview display of your slider will change automatically.

That is however just the first step in terms of your ability to customize your content slider. Through a series of tabs, SlideDeck allows you to change the setup, appearance, content, navigation and playback. The level of control you have is superb – there is essentially nothing on the slider that you can’t change. Everything from the font style, to the slide display length, and even to the touch sensitivity of the controls can be altered.

Implementation

There are no limitations as to where you can place sliders created with SlideDeck.

Inserting a slider into a post or page is as easy as clicking the “SD” button next to the media uploader:

SlideDeck

…and selecting whichever slider you want to insert from the popup box:

SlideDeck

Once you have done that, a shortcode will be pasted into the visual editor:

SlideDeck

That shortcode represents the slider, so wherever you place it within the visual editor, it will display in the post or page.

SlideDeck comes complete with its own widget, and each slider is accompanied by a PHP code snippet, which you can paste anywhere within your theme’s template files.

Weak Points?

As much as I would like to point out a few areas in which SlideDeck doesn’t quite get it right, I am struggling. This plugin has been around for a long time, and it shows – it is a finely honed piece of software. There isn’t really anything bad to say.

The folks at Digital Telepathy even optimized the pricing. Although SlideDeck was once $79 for a single license (which I considered a bit steep), it will now only set you back $49 – which in my opinion is a very reasonable price.

I can’t really think of any other application that directly competes with SlideDeck. Although there are plenty of slider plugins available, I have never seen one that can compete in terms of the sheer depth of functionality that SlideDeck has on offer.

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Filed Under: Reviews, Wordpress

About Tom Ewer

Follow @tomewer

Tom Ewer is a freelance blogger and the owner of Leaving Work Behind, a blog for anyone interested in quitting their job and building a better life for themselves. Join Tom's mailing list to receive his pearls of wisdom (and occasional rants).

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{ 9 Responses }

  1. Taswir Haider says:
    Another cool review from Tom like the Fanciest Author box plugin. I am little bit confused whether search engines can read the content in sliders like flash. As using flash doesn't bring any good value to search engines, do slider work in the same way?
  2. Suzanne says:
    It sounds like slidedeck can handle design options that many other similar tools are not able to. I can think of several applications for my clients for this tool. Thanks! Suzanne
  3. Bharat says:
    I have got a good experience in using slideDeck and everything involved in setting up is damn easy. If you are working on client projects, then use this for sliders and they surely will like your work. Thanks for this unbiased review.
    • Tom Ewer says:
      No problem Bharat :-)
  4. Anjana Arun says:
    wow cool. slidedeck seems to be great. I have a photo blog and about various tech porducts. so this plugin can help me so much. Thanks for the info.
  5. Allie says:
    Hi Tom, I love having sliders on my blog but the last one I had really slowed down my loading speed. Unfortunately I had to get rid of it. That was hard because I knew people were clicking on the links I placed in the slide. Does Slidedeck slow down your blog? ~Allie
    • Tom Ewer says:
      Hey Allie, SlideDeck itself is pretty darn slick. The load speed issue depends largely upon the content you place within the slider. Cheers, Tom
    • Jason says:
      Hi Allie I work with the SlideDeck team =) To answer your question, it really depends on the content you're loading. We built SlideDeck to do some intelligent caching of the content being referenced in order to keep the speed high, but if you build one that pulls in 25 YouTube videos, then yes, you'll likely experience some slowdown. In general, though, we've not received any complaints about speed. I hope that helps!
  6. DiTesco says:
    Thanks for the update. I have been using the "free version" of SlideDeck and I have to admit that I have never encountered any problems what-so-ever. Actually, I do have to update the version I am using :) Really cool plugin and makes any WebSite look more professional. Creativity is the only limit ;-)

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