How to set-up up your Genesis Responsive Slider Plugin just the way you want it.
Not all StudioPress themes have a built in slider, if yours does, read on.
First install and activate the Genesis Responsive Slider Plugin
If your Genesis based theme is not mobile responsive, use the Genesis slider. If you have a mobile responsive theme that is based on the Genesis framework, use the Genesis Responsive Slider.
The first thing to do after installing the Genesis Responsive Slider plugin is find out what size image is used in the slider for your specific theme. You must enter these size settings in the plugin’s settings page.
Finding the correct size for your slider images
(These instructions are for Firefox web browser.)
- Go to the StudioPress.com site and find the demo for your theme.
- When you’ve found the demo page for your theme, right click the slider image and choose “View image info”.
- You’ll see a pop up, look for “Dimensions”.
- Make a note of the size listed under dimensions.
- Go to, Dashboard > Genesis > Slider Settings.
- Display Settings >
- Maximum Slider Width (in pixels):
- Maximum Slider Height (in pixels):
- Enter the sizes you got from your web browser. (See image below.)
Next, make four blog posts.
- Assign all four posts to a new empty category.
- Attach a featured image, of the right size, to each blog post.
You now have four blog posts, in their own category (you could call the category, slides). All four blog posts have the correct sized featured images assigned to them.
Go to Dashboard > Genesis > Slider Settings.
Choose the type of content to use in your slider:
- Would you like to use posts or pages? (Choose posts.)
- By Taxonomy and Terms: (Which category are your slide posts in?) Choose a term or category to determine what slides to include.
- Pick the category that contains the posts with featured images that you’ve just made. (My posts were in a category called slides.)
- Click the blue save button to save your work.
Go to Appearance > widgets.
Drag the Genesis Responsive slider widget into the Home Slider widget area. The slider widget area will have a different name on each site, but it should be obvious which one it is.
Click the blue Save button.
Test to see if your slider is working.
You did remember to drag the slider widget in to the slider widget area didn’t you :-)
Genesis slider settings – advanced
The Genesis Responsive Slider is mobile responsive.
The only other major difference between the Genesis Responsive Slider settings and the Genesis Slider settings, is the number of transitions available. If you have the Genesis slider widget, experiment and see which transition you like. (Slide, fade etc.)
Genesis responsive slider has just two transition effects…
- Slide
- Fade
Genesis slider has more effects…
- Scroll right, left, down, up.
- Fade
- Wipe
- Cover up, down, left, right.
- Rewind slides.
- Loop slides.
Choosing which images or pages to show in your slider.
In the previous video I showed you how to select the images for your slider by using blog posts from a specific category.
Another good way to select the images to use in the Genesis Responsive Slider is to choose PAGES (not posts) in the first dialogue box at the top of the screen. Then where it says Include or exclude by page ID, type a list of page ID’s that you want to use.
To do this you need to know the id number of each individual page you want to include in your slider.
Finding page id numbers…
- Dashboard > Pages > All Pages.
- Hover your mouse over any page title.
- Look at the bottom of your web browser screen.
- Find the “post=247” etc. This is the ID number.
- Note the number for each page you want to use.
- List these numbers with a comma between each number 247,263,270 etc.
In the section that says Include or exclude by page ID…
- You MUST select Include from the drop down list.
- Place your comma separated list in the “List which post ID’s to include” section.
- Take care, one box is for post or page ID’s one box is for Taxonomy ID. Choose post ID. (Not the taxonomy box!)
Number of slides to show.
- This needs to be the same as the number of id’s you’ve listed. So if your list of page id’s has three id numbers in it, type 3 in the number of slides to show box.
Number of posts to offset.
- If you want to show all posts from a particular category but don’t want to show the most recent post for some reason, offset by 1.
Display settings…
- Find the correct image sizes for your theme’s slider and enter them here.
- Select to show or hide the previous and next arrows in the slider.
- The responsive slider also lets you display a pagination, progress indicator.
Content settings…
- Do not link slider to post or page.
- Display post or page title in slider.
- Display content in slider.
- Hide title and content on mobile devices (responsive slider only).
If you choose to display content (text) in the slider, you can display the excerpt or content. If you choose Display Post Content, limit the number of characters displayed. If you display too many characters the text in the slider will break out of the bottom of the box.
In the “More Text” dialogue box, type the words you would like as the click-able link text. When clicked, the more text links to the full post or page.
Slider Excerpt Width. How wide do you want the text box in your slider to be?
- Genesis Slider uses a pixel width, 50 pixels etc.
- Genesis Responsive Slider uses a percentage with 50% of slider width etc.
From my experience, this excerpt width doesn’t always work.
Excerpt Location, Where will the text box appear in the slider?
- Top right.
- Top left.
- Bottom right.
- Bottom left.
Make sure you click the blue save button to save your changes.
And don’t forget to drag the slider widget in to the slider widget area :-)