Image sliders are a very upscale feature included natively in many premium themes, or premium plugins, however today I have the pleasure of reviewing for you one free slider plugin with some awesome premium features. The plugin is called Cyclone Slider 2.
This plugin is is beautiful, and easy to use. It has enough options to allow you to quickly create and embed image slideshows in your posts and pages, without being complex or confusing. You won’t need a manual to understand it either as the interface is very well designed.
Here are some of Cyclone Slider 2’s best features:
- Easily add multiple images to one slider.
- Image Title and Description appear as a transparent image overlay which looks snazzy.
- Each slide can have it’s own URL and you can choose to open the link in a new window, or in the current one.
- Sliders can be sized to just about any dimensions you want.
- Multiple transition styles available. Define one style, or make each transition different per image.
- Using shortcodes, the image sliders can be embedded just about anywhere.
- Slides can be re-ordered by dragging and dropping them.
Cyclone Slider Plugin Uses Custom Post Types
Another nice feature of the Cyclone Slider 2 plugin is that slideshows are actually created as custom posts, which means you could in theory, make a nice slide show and use it as a sidebar widget, or embed it on several different places on your site inside other posts or pages. This makes it very versatile and the slideshows have their own library section for management, so you don’t have to hunt all over other posts to find your slide shows.
Responsive and Modern Styling
Some developers are better at design than others, and the developer responsible for this plugin certainly seems to have a handle on what good Web 2.0 styling looks like. The sliders are just simply beautiful to look at, and the titles and descriptions are easy to read, yet not distracting to the images. The responsive design also means the sliders adapt generally to different screen sizes.
Overall, Cyclone Slider 2 is a great little plugin, and one worthy of dressing up your “magazine” style blog pages.
And you really can’t beat the price. 🙂
Biz Physician says
This is a terrific review Lisa. A really well put together with a lot of great information given from “how to use” to “Features and Benefits”.
Given the insight you offer here, clearly “Cyclone Slider 2” could be a very useful adjunct plugin to enhance almost any WordPress blogger’s arsenal of tools that would help make their blogs more interesting and draw more traffic. Your review deserves greater publicity. Well done and thank you.
Lisa Allen says
Thanks for swinging by to comment Peter and Dita. I actually really enjoyed reviewing the plugin because it was just so slick and professionally done. It’s definitely on my list of plugins to install on future blogs.
About the slider and product promotions Dita, you could do that easily.
The slider allows you to link each slide to a URL and it doesn’t matter if it’s on your own blog or a different site.
However you can’t display a page with the slider, only images. There are some other plugins I’ve seen that can display a post inside a page or a page inside a post using shortcodes, but none of them are sliders that I can remember. But essentially, what you’re describing is similar to a text/html banner. The shopping cart I use has the capability natively, and can rotate these html banners in the page using ajax.
Dita @ ebizdame says
Hey Lisa,
Hmmm…”The slider allows you to link each slide to a URL and it doesn’t matter if it’s on your own blog or a different site.”
So in a sense I could create an image related to my product and then link that image to a page I talk about it. Interesting!!!
With respect to your 2nd part, that is way beyond my current techie abilities even to understand.
I am bookmarking this wonderful review, so I can come back to it and follow your instruction as I try to implement it. (I wish I had another 24 hours in a day)
Regards,
Dita
Lisa Allen says
Actually I would not worry about trying to implement it yourself Dita. So many of us tend to get bogged down in learning the technical parts of everything we are involved in, when a lot of the time what we should do is just find someone to do the task. You could outsource it on oDesk very likely. If you try to wear too many hats, you won’t be wearing any of them well, so get used to outsourcing a little bit. Your future business will thank you!
Yes, exactly 🙂 Page, post, any URL can be put in the URL for the slide.
Dita @ ebizdame says
Hi Lisa,
Thank you for a great review and instructions on how to set it up. I have a slider option on my site (I use Woothemes Canvas) but I have not set it up yet. I need to explore it a bit further. I like this one better but I am not sure if it would conflict with my site. I definitely need to explore that.
I also wanted to ask you if you have ever come across a slider that includes pages. I have stopped writing product reviews on pages because when I will incorporate a slider it will not be able to show my product reviews.
It would be nice to promote products in the slider if the pics are linked to product pages. That way you are still promoting above the fold on your homepage, but because the link leads to a page or a post it complies with Google (does not like ads above the fold).
Also, if a slider could show a page, then one can include squeeze pages there as well.
I often thought of developing one like that but I am not technically adept to develop something like that
What are your thoughts on that?
Regards,
Dita