Notice: The Slider Pro Plugin is being replaced by Meta Slider.

Posted on Monday, January 13th, 2020

You may have noticed that some of the Slider Pro slideshow(s) in your site(s) have been replaced with ones that appear slightly different.

The Marketing Web Services team is in the process of replacing the Slider Pro plugin with one called MetaSlider. We’ll be recreating all your sliders using the new plugin, you won’t have to do anything for this to take place.

Please note: if you have one of the two column sliders in your site we’re going to leave those alone for now, as we’ll likely find another solution for updating those in the near future.

When will all the slides be converted?

  • Sometime in the Winter … we’re not in a rush to convert them.

Why are we replacing Slider Pro?

  • We’ve found that Slider Pro doesn’t quite meet all the web accessibility standards that we’d like it to, (for people who use screen reader software, etc… )
  • It also has a lot of customization options that are rarely used, and when they are – can sometimes end up producing sliders that don’t match the college branding standards as much as we’d like.
    • As well – we also have the slider plugin Revolution Slider, which we use for more complex slides with different layouts and interactivity We think it’s unnecessary to have two complex slider plugins available
  • It’s not a widely used plugin on the web, and isn’t updated by the developer as frequently as we’d like.

Why are we switching to MetaSlider?

  • We’ve found that it better meets the accessibility standards that we’re trying to match.
  • It has a simpler interface with fewer options, which will make it easier to work with for basic slider use.
    • We’ve also been able to customize it a bit to hide some of the extra options that we don’t want to make available right now
  • It’s the most widely used WordPress slider plugin – and it’s also frequently updated by the developers – so we think there will be better technical support for it in the long run.

How do I use it?

  • You’ll find the MetaSlider menu item at the bottom of the WP admin menu.
  • There are instructions onscreen in the plugin, and some fairly self explanatory menu items.
  • If we get enough feedback that more instructions are required – we’ll add another post an let you know about it.

 

 


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