By Philipp Bammes

August 07, 2023

Slick Slider Plugin

Turn your native WordPress galleries into beautiful fully responsive sliders. Adjust the slider to your needs on a per gallery base.

Slick Slider turns your native WordPress galleries into beautiful fully responsive sliders. Choose from a wide range of options to adjust all sliders to your needs with a simple click.
Slick Slider allows you to change default options valid for all sliders or to adjust them on a per gallery base.

Available options (amongst others):

Turn autoplay on or off
Change default speed of animation and autoplay
Turn fade effect on or off
Turn arrows and dots on or off
Use center mode to see partial prev/next slides
Make slider infinite
Pause slider on hover
Adjust slides to scroll and slides to show
Enable lazy loading for better performance
Stack images up in rows
Turn vertical sliders and RTL support on or off
Link your images using native gallery settings
Many more

Note: No support for slick’s responsive options feature (different options at different breakpoints) at the moment.
Note: Slick Slider requires at least PHP 5.6! That means it won’t work on websites which are powered by PHP older than version 5.6!
If you don’t know your website’s PHP version ask your host and request an update if necessary. Click here for more information.

Slick Slider uses the awesome slick slider written by Ken Wheeler.

Screenshots

Media settings. All available options are listed here.
Gallery Media Modal. Only the most important options are visible.
Frontend with slider.

FAQ

I don’t want all galleries to become sliders! Is this possible?

Absolutely! On each gallery Media Modal there’s a checkbox called “Use Slick Slider”. If you leave this box unchecked your gallery will be a simple … gallery.

Is it possible to place the slider somewhere else, say in a widget?

Since Slick Slider uses the default gallery shortcode, you can simply paste it wherever you want it to appear.
Note that you may need to enable support for shortcodes in widgets. Additionally if you want to edit the slider options you’ll have to change it using the shortcode attributes directly.

Is it possible to specify custom links for the gallery images?

Use the plugin WP Gallery Custom Links.

Note: Only support for custom URLs and link targets (including the filter wpgcl_filter_raw_gallery_link_url). No support for additional custom fields or shortcode attributes.

Is it possible to open linked images in a lightbox?

Use the plugin WP Featherlight.

Note: The gallery’s setting “Link To” has to be set to “Media File”.

Is it possible to add captions?

Use the option “Show caption”.

Note: The captions aren’t styled. You need to apply some CSS on them (use the class .slide__caption).

Is it possible to use slick’s JS and CSS independently?

Paste the following lines in your functions.php:

add_action( 'wp_enqueue_scripts', function() { wp_enqueue_script( 'slick-slider-core' ); wp_enqueue_style( 'slick-slider-core-theme' ); }, 11 );

Is it possible to prevent slick’s JS and CSS to get loaded?

Paste the following lines in your functions.php:

add_action( 'wp_enqueue_scripts', function() { wp_deregister_script( 'slick-slider-core' ); wp_deregister_style( 'slick-slider-core' ); }, 11 );

Note: This will also remove the initiation script and helper CSS from the page (see below).

Is it possible to prevent the slider from getting automatically initiated?

Use add_filter( 'slick_slider_init_slider', '__return_false' );.

Is it possible to prevent the plugin from adding additional helper CSS on my page?

These three line of CSS are sometimes required if the page has a white background. Otherwise the slider arrows won’t be visible.
You can turn it off by using add_filter( 'slick_slider_load_helper_css', '__return_false' );.

Is it possible to change the gallery attributes using PHP?

Use the WordPress core filter shortcode_atts_gallery.

Is it possible to adjust the caption’s markup?

Use the filter slick_slider_caption_html. Parameters: caption HTML, attachment ID, post ID, slider instance.

Is it possible to adjust the markup for each slide?

Use the filter slick_slider_slide_html. Parameters: slide HTML, attachment ID, post ID, slider instance.

Is it possible to adjust the markup for the entire slider?

Use the filter slick_slider_html. Parameters: slider HTML, post ID, slider instance.

Is it possible to enqueue scripts and styles unminified?

Use the constant SCRIPT_DEBUG.

I want to buy you a beer!

Thats great, thanks! First of all, you should say thank you to Ken Wheeler who developed the actual slick slider.
If you want, you can buy me a beer too.

Changelog

0.5.2 (08/07/2023)

Fix: PHP 8.0 compatibility

0.5.1 (10/04/2017)

Fix: Bug (introduced in 0.5) that caused non Slick galleries following a Slick gallery to not show images

0.5 (09/30/2017)

Feature: Updated Slick to v1.8.0
Feature: Added new options “appendDots”, “dotsClass”, “focusOnChange”, “pauseOnFocus”, “waitForAnimate” and “zIndex”
Feature: Added new option “Show caption”, deprecating the slick_slider_show_caption filter
Feature: Always lazy load images to improve page load time
Fix: Bug that hid the Slick Slider settings in the Gallery Media Modal under certain circumstances
Misc: Added new actions slick_slider_before_slider, slick_slider_after_slider, slick_slider_before_slide and slick_slider_after_slide
Misc: Extended filters slick_slider_caption_html, slick_slider_slide_html and slick_slider_html
Misc: Changed default value of “focusOnSelect” to false
Misc: Minor PHP, JavaScript and CSS improvements

0.4.2 (01/08/2017)

Fix: Bug (introduced in 0.4) that prevented numeric option values in gallery modal to update

0.4.1 (01/07/2017)

Fix: Bug (introduced in 0.4) that appeared when activating the plugin or resetting the options
Misc: Several code formatting changes according to the WordPress Coding Standards

0.4 (01/03/2017)

Feature: Added support for custom links (see FAQ section)
Feature: Added lightbox support (see FAQ section)
Feature: Added support for SCRIPT_DEBUG constant

0.3 (10/31/2016)

Feature: Extended FAQ section in readme.txt
Fix: Bug that prevented new options to be added (finally)
Fix: Minor tweaks in readme.txt

0.2 (10/23/2016)

Feature: Added option to toggle Slick Slider options on gallery modal
Fix: Minor tweaks in readme.txt
Fix: Minor bug causing some default values to be rendered in data-slick attribute
Fix: Minor bug that prevented new options to be added
Fix: Minor bug that caused wrapper div to be included in caption filter
Fix: Normalized gallery modal CSS

0.1 (10/07/2016)

Initial release