The Layers Slider Widget is incredibly versatile and can be used as a traditional content slider, a jumbo layout section, Call-To-Action bar, Testimonial, or slideshow, just to name a few! This article outlines the widget’s options. For steps on configuring this widget for any of the other uses listed above, visit the Tutorials section.

When you add a new Slider widget, or if you have created a page using one of the Preset layouts, the Slider will display with some default settings and content.

Click the widget to expand the options panel. You can customize the overall look and layout of the widget using the Settings on the right side of the widget.

Each icon’s dropdown contains sections you can expand by clicking the plus button.

The settings panel contains general options for your slider such as the layout, navigation style and animation.

Layout

This section sets the Slider’s overall size. Click the thumbnail corresponding to the layout you like:

• Boxed will limit the width of the slider to 1040px by default and center it.
• Full Width/Skinny will allow the slider to span the entire browser window but take a custom height you specify
• Full Screen will set the slides to fill the entire height and width of the user’s browser window.

Auto-Height Slides

Toggle this option if you want slides to automatically adjust the slider’s height based on the content/image size of the first visible slide.

This setting is ignored if Full Screen Layout is chosen.This option is mainly used to ensure the slider is tall enough to accomodate text at all screen sizes when using the Boxed or Full width layouts.

Slider Height

The slider is 550 pixels tall by default when using the Boxed or Full Width/Skinny layouts. If you would like to make it shorter or taller, enter your desired value here (minimum of 100)

To fit a default size Title, Description and Button, you must set it to at least 180.

Padding

You may use the Padding fields to adjust the padding inside the slide and outside the content, if desired. These values correspond to pixels.

If using the Boxed or Full Width layouts, you may also adjust the margins, which controls the space around the slider.

Slider Navigation

Show Slider Arrows

Check this option if you want the left and right slider arrows to show when the mouse hovers over the slide. If your widget only has one slide, this option is ignored.

Arrows are best if you want your visitors to be able to click back and fourth on their own. We do not recommend enabling arrows if you have Auto-Play enabled in the animation section.

Show Slider Dots

Check this option to show navigation dots at the bottom of the slider. These can be used alone or in combination with the arrows, but are best used when you have the slider set to auto-slide (when the arrows should be disabled)

Navigation Color

Choose a color for your arrows or dots (white by default)

Animation Type

This option controls the slide effect. Choose from a traditional Slide (right to left), Fade, or Parallax. The Parallax option will animate the slider content separately from the background when the slider is advanced or auto-playedand should not be confused with a parallax background, which is set in the slide background option (explained below)

Auto-play Slides

Toggle this option if you would like your slider to advance automatically. This option should not be used if you have Featured Video in any of your slides.

The widget options bar is something you will see in most Layers widgets. These menus give you detailed control over the content of the widget where content areas are present. A content area is typically a slide, column, tab, accordion or other repeatable area.

Background

Background Color

Choose a background color for your slide. This should closely match the primary color of any background image, as it determines whether the text loads as white or dark gray by default.

Background Type (Layers Pro)

Layers Pro adds an additional drop-down here for choosing your background type. Gradient will allow you to choose a second color to create a nice gradient effect.

Background Image

1. Click Choose Image to select or upload an image in the Media Library. Background images should be at least 1900px wide and as tall as your slider for best results.
2. Under Background Repeat, choose whether to center the image, tile it, repeat it only horizontally, or repeat it only vertically.
3. Under Background Position, choose how to align the image (centered by default).
4. Toggle the Stretch option if you would like your image to responsively size itself to the viewport width (recommended).
5. Toggle Darken to add a dark overlay, best used with images that have high contrast so your text shows up better.

PARALLAX (LAYERS PRO)

Layers Pro adds a Parallax option that allows your background image to stay in place while the site is scrolled. For Parallax to work well, your background image must be on Repeat, or be at least 300px taller than the slider’s height to allow for scrolling. For full screen desktops, this means at least 1000px tall and 1900px wide.

Background Video (Layers Pro)

YouTube, Vimeo or Self-Hosted videos may be added to the slider background to create dynamic slides with full motion graphics, scenic backgrounds or ambiental styles. See How to Embed Audio & Video with Layers for detailed information.

For standard video content in your slides, see Images, next:

Featured Media

Featured Media

This setting adds an image or oEmbed media to the content area of your  slide, column, tab etc. Unlike the background option, images and oEmbed media added here are fully responsive.

Featured Image

Click CHOOSE IMAGE and upload or select an image from your Media Library.

• Images should be at least 960px wide for best results, and will be cropped or scaled automatically depending on the side of the column and your Image Ratio choice.

Video URL(oEmbed)

• This field takes any oEmbed content URL
• Most major media platforms support oEmbed, including YouTube, Vimeo, SoundCloud, Twitter and Dailymotion.
• The URL is copied from the "Share" link on the audio or video player.
• oEmbed media will take the place of Featured Images

See How to Embed Audio & Video with Layers for detailed information on using oEmbed.

Image Ratio

The icon bar at the bottom of the Featured Media panel controls how your featured image is displayed.

The following specifications pertain to using the Boxed Layout. Full Width Layouts need your chosen images to be at least 600px wide.

• Portrait: Uses the 340px wide scale of portrait oriented images, or crops your image to 340px from center. The original height is maintained.
• Landscape: Uses the 480px wide scale of landscape oriented images, or crops your portrait images from center.
• Square: crops your image to 480x480 from center
• Original: Uses the original image, scaled proportionately to fit the layout. For left and right aligned images, this is a max of 630px wide. For center-aligned images, this is a max of 1000px wide.
• Circle: Sets a radius on your image.  To get a perfect circle, your original image must be square. Portrait and Landscape originals will produce ovals.

Max Image Size (Layers Pro)

Layers Pro adds an Image Size option where you may specify the max height and width of your featured media in pixels. This is helpful for controlling video players in some layouts.

Lightbox (Layers Pro)

Toggle this option if you want to enable your featured image to open in a lightbox. This may not work with video unless you have a compatible video lightbox plugin installed.

Image Align

The Image align option will affect the layout of your content area by placing the image above the text, to the left or to the right.

• The slider widget has an additional option to place the image below the text. When using the image-below layout, tall images will appear to "peek" out from the bottom of the slide.
• Images that are large enough will fill the entire image area and should not need additional alignment within the image container.

Text

The Text option controls the alignment and styling of the title and excerpt within the content area. If you have Layers Pro, your options will begin with Header Styling.

Text Size

Choose from Small, Medium or Large. Each size option is pre-configured with optimal balance, line height and font-size combinations and will vary depending on your font choice in Site Settings, or custom styling added through a Style Kit or Child Theme.

Text Alignment

The Text align option will affect the alignment of text inside the text column of the content area (versus the Image Align which determines the overall layout or placement of the text in relation to the image column). Choose from Left, Center, Right or Justified.

Header & Excerpt Styling

These two groups control styling of the header and the excerpt (slide content) text separately

Text Color

Depending on the background color of the content area, your text will be black or white by default, but can be customized here.

Heading Type (L:ayers Pro)

This option allows you to choose the heading tag to wrap your title, H3 by default. The heading tag does not impact SEO ranking or change the heading size by default, though it can be used in child themes or custom styling to allow selecting special heading styles such as jumbo headings, fancy headings etc.

For best results we recommend keeping these H2 or H3 to ensure your site outline reads well for visitors on accessibility devices.

Heading Size (Layers Pro)

You may also choose the size, line height and spacing of your heading font in pixels, along with the weight

Heading Style (Layers Pro)

Choose italic, underline, strikethrough or uppercase, if desired

Buttons (Layers Pro)

The buttons control allows you to customize the link button style for this slide and is available with Layers Pro. You may select Default or Hover to set the options for each state.

Background

Choose from Solid, Transparent, or Gradient.

• If Gradient is chosen, you will be prompted to choose the Gradient Starting color and Gradient End color, and the angle for the colors to fade.
• If Solid is chosen, you will be prompted to choose a Background Color

Borders

Slide the toggle to increase or decrease the border or enter a pixel value. Set to 0 for no border.

Border Color

1. Click the icon for each side of the button you wish to add a border.
2. Enter a pixel value for the width of the border. Example 1 = thin, 3 = standard, 5 = fat
3. Choose a Style
4. Enter a pixel value for the radius which controls the roundness of the corners, or leave blank for no rounding.  Example: 4 = soft corners,  20 = rounded rectangle, 100 = pill
5. Click the Border Color toggle to choose a color

Font

1. Choose the font color
2. Enter a size, line height and spacing in pixels, if desired, or leave blank for defaults
3. You may also choose the size, line height and spacing of your heading font in pixels, along with the weight
4. Choose italic, underline, strikethrough or uppercase, if desired

Padding

The padding controls the space between the button text and the edges of the button. Enter values in pixels.

Margin

The margins control the space around the outside of the button. Typically you should only need to set the top margin.

Shadow

If you would like to add a drop-shadow to your button, select a color, then enter the offset for the shadow in the X and Y fields (you can enter negatives here to put the shadow top or left) andpixel values for how much blur and spread, if desired. For those of you familiar with CSS, this corresponds to the box-shadow property.

Advanced

The advanced panel in the options bar allows you to add a custom class for help targeting this specific slide in any Custom CSS.

You may enter a title and short description here, if desired, or leave these sections blank.

Title

Sets the heading of text in the content area, affected by the Slide Options Text settings. Leave blank for no heading.

Excerpt

Enter the text you want to show in the content area, or leave blank for no content.

The Excerpt includes rich text editing and supports basic HTML input via the Code </> view, much like the WordPress editor.

• For best results, limit your content to brief, list-style or pointed text, keeping mobile users in mind.
• Large amounts of text may not fit in the slider on mobile screens.

Code view

• You cannot put scripts into this field such as javascript snippets
• You should not paste text/html from Word or other text editors into this field or it may carry over unpredictable code that causes formatting issues.
• Shortcodes are OK, but the element pulled in may not jive well with the slide’s design limitations and may require Advanced CSS styling.

Content Editor Toolbar

The INSERT LINK option allows for static or dynamic linking of your column content to any URL or published post or page on your site. This option will link the slide’s Title and Featured Image, in addition to any button element you create.

1. Select Custom or Existing Content from the LINK drop-down
2. Enter the full URL (if Custom) or search for the page or post title you want to link to and select it
3. Click the offpage icon in the drop-down if you want this link to open a new browser tab
4. Enter your desired link text.

Enable Animations (Layers Pro)

Toggle this option to blue if you want loading animations applied to this widget. The widget will fade in on scroll.

Hide on Certain Devices (Layers Pro)

If you need to hide this widget on specific screen sizes, such as small phones, you can click to select the corresponding size here. This option is helpful if you want to design a special slider just for mobiles, or have content in your main slider that is not mobile-friendly, such as flash or background video.

Anchor & Widget ID

You may enter a  ID name here for use with anchor menus (single scrolling pages). IDs must be totally unique to avoid conflicts. For example, do not use “slider” or “widget” or “top”  but instead use “services”  or “testimonials”, etc describing the section of your site.

Custom Classes

This section is intended for front-end designers or individuals who are comfortable working with CSS. It allows you to create a custom class and add some custom CSS that will load only when a slider with this class is loaded. This is useful in cases where you want to style sliders differently from one another and want the styling to be saved in the page’s export data. This has advantages over using the global CSS area when creating style kits, for example. You may also add specific classes to specific slides by using the slide’s Advanced button.

If you are new to CSS or WordPress, you can disregard the Advanced button, although some of our Tutorials will provide you with instructions and some codes snippets to get you started with using this feature.

See How to Use the Advanced Design Bar Option to Add Custom Classes to Widgets

• Delete, click the pencil icon in the right corner of the column’s title bar to expand it, then click the red trash-can icon.
• Add, simply click the +ADD NEW Slide button. This will duplicate your last slide to help speed up customization.

Save your layout any time by clicking SAVE & PUBLISH

Each Save will create a revision (up to 5) you can restore if you made a mistake or want to revert to a previous version. See How to Restore Layers Page Revisions for details.

For more amazing ways to use the Slider Widget, check out our Slider Widget tutorial series in 10 Ways to Use the Layers Slider Widget

Next up, the Content Widget