There is a lot of talk on the various Elegant Theme forums about the Slider – how annoying it is that the slider is TOTALLY responsive and I can’t get it to show what I want it to on my site – kind of thing.

It’s true to say that the Divi slider – from a developer’s point of view is a bit of a nuisance – however, from a non-developers perspective, it is good to know that an inexperienced user can have a responsive slider in place.

Revolution slider or more accurately Slider Revolution – for some may seem a bit of an overkill, for others it gives the ability to completely style calls to action, have slide in and out effects and link to any content you like. It also allows a better, more focused way of developing sliders for other parts of the site. You can have multiple images, text and links even in the same slider.

slider_revolution

The downside is of course it is only available as a premium plugin , unless you buy a bundled theme –  you can get the slider from here although at only $18.00 it offers good value for what it is.

The licence is annual for updates and on that note it is very important as the makers did a bit of a faux pas in as much as the slider was bundled into a lot of themes and as such the bundled versions were not updated automatically and hackers were able to get into over 100,000 sites due to the fact that the developers decided to update on the quiet rather than announce the bug to bundled theme users – it caused a bit of a furore and a back lash but frankly, now the slider bug is fixed, it is a good solution.

Layer Slider  – Again available from the same place as revolution slider and slightly more cost effective at just $17.00– has a few nifty tricks up its sleeve and it has just undergone some massive updates too. You can literally do anything you want with it apart from asking it to cook your dinner or make you a coffee and as we developers know, we need feeding and caffeine 24/7.

If you are into ecommerce or even using a big image with loads of other images in it, you can use layerslider to create the hotlinks to your products too. So, there you have our 2 cents worth – enjoy Layer Slider.

layerslider

But, do we really need a slider? – there are a lot of comments about this pretty much anywhere from a lead generation perspective and from a design perspective right through to user experience. A slider or a header banner or anything that moves is attractive in the right place at the right time. With Revolution and Layer Slider, you can have the best of both worlds, create beautiful header images with knockout content and calls to action – and it’s also pretty easy to put a contact form or a subscribe module right where you need it with little or no fuss.

As a developer and designer, you need to make a choice, use the Divi slider or take an opportunity to use an alternative. Whatever you decide, we are with you all the way and with Divi Booster helping to improve the Divi Slider, the choices are pretty good

You may wonder why we as a theme and plugin market place are talking about a slider that is on the Envato Market Place – well, we have to say, the sliders we are talking about are tried and tested by us and they just work. We are a sharing community too and we don’t want to lead anyone to a solution that is not good for their needs or not fit for purpose. If you like what we have on offer here at Elegant Marketplace – feel free to share and support our Market Place too.

Andrew Palmer
Andrew is an SEO & online marketing professional based in the UK. He can be found at www.somebodyshero.co.uk and is excited to be a founding member of Elegant Marketplace. He answers only to his 13 year old daughter, so, if he isn’t working on a website somewhere, he is with her.