Smart Slider 3 is the most powerful and intuitive WordPress plugin to create sliders which was never possible before. Fully responsive, SEO optimized and works with any WordPress theme. Create beautiful sliders and tell stories without any code.
Live slide editor
A beautiful interface makes creating slides fast and efficient. The complete freedom to build what you want, the way you want. Edit your slides as you used to in page builders. Drop layers after each other and structure them with rows and columns.
Unique Layouts with Layers
Enhance your slider with the layers and make your site even more unique and grandiose. Every heading, text, image, button and video can be edited easily with the customization options. Change all the details that really matter in typography and style.
Responsive, Mobile-Ready Sliders
Switch your slider to a different device mode and optimize your content for the resolution. Your site can be enjoyed in any environment, be it a mobile, tablet or desktop.
Beautiful Sliders to Start
No tech skills are needed, just pick a slider template. It works like magic! Choose from a variety of beautiful templates or start with a blank Slider. The simple way to build every kind: image, layer, video and post slider.
Most powerful features
Default position – Edit your slides as you used to in page builders.
Absolute position – Drag and drop your layers anywhere on the slide with absolute layers.
Slide Library – Slide Library provides several pre-made slides to kickstart your work.
Totally integrated with WordPress – Media manager, shortcode, widget, post permalinks, post editor.
Page Builder support – Elementor, Divi, Beaver Builder, Page Builder by SiteOrigin, Visual Composer, WPBakery Page Builder, Gutenberg and many more…
Totally responsive and touch friendly – Sliders can be enjoyed on any device, be it a mobile, tablet or desktop.
“I can heartily recommend the free version. It already provides more functionality than any other slider plugin – even many premium ones.” – Daniel Pataki – WPMU DEV
“Having tried more than a few WordPress slider plugins, both free and paid, I can honestly say that this is one of the best that I’ve ever tested…” – Daryn Collier – WPKube
“Since Smart Slider is free to use, I do not have to really stress how good a plugin it is because you can download it yourself and see for yourself.” – Kevin Muldoon
“This plugin can be used for much more than a simple slider – being able to create whole sections of your website.” – Oliver Dale – WPLift
“Taking all this into consideration we can safely say that Smart Slider 3 is one of the top WordPress slider plugins.” – Mark Zahra – WP Mayor
Support
Smart Slider 3 is a community-driven project that would not be the same without your feedback. If you have any problem or feature request for this plugin, please feel free to contact us!
Search for Smart Slider 3 through ‘Plugins > Add New’ interface.
Find the plugin box of Smart Slider 3 and click on the ‘Install Now’ button.
Then activate the Smart Slider 3 plugin.
Create a new slider: Click on the ‘Smart Slider’ menu, click on the create slider button. Then you can add images and videos as slide and you can customize your slides with layers.
Then copy the shortcode from the Publish slider box and paste it into a post or a page.
Upload the Smart Slider 3 through ‘Plugins > Add New > Upload’ interface or upload smart-slider-3 folder to the ‘/wp-content/plugins/’ directory.
Activate the Smart Slider 3 plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress.
Create a new slider: Click on the ‘Smart Slider’ menu, click on the create slider button. Then you can add images and videos as slide and you can customize your slides with layers.
Then copy the shortcode from the Publish slider box and paste it into a post or a page.
Screenshots
User-friendly dashboard in our slider plugin for seamless management.
Effortlessly customize your WordPress slider with our intuitive settings page.
Create captivating slides with ease, using our WordPress slider's beginner-friendly editing tools.
Enhance your site with our FREE full-width responsive slider, featuring gradients and layers.
Discover our FREE, easy-to-use image slider with captions and navigation arrows.
Explore our FREE Thumbnail Image Slider – a visually engaging addition to your website.
Experience the FREE version's dynamic Image Slider with a captivating static slide.
Enhance your site with our FREE Full-Width Content Post Slider.
Enhance your site with our FREE Layer Slider's stylish layers for a better user experience.
FAQ
1. How do I add the slider to my site?
You can add your slider by shortcode or via the widget control panel or PHP shortcode. Watch the 🎥 Publishing tutorial video to learn more about the topic.
Canvas mode was renamed to Absolute. You can add Absolute positioned layers using the toggle at the Add panel, and switch a Default layer to Absolute at layer window > Style tab > Position.
But we recommend working with Default positioned layers because the responsive behavior is better, and the slide building is much faster. Most layouts people want to create can be done with Default positioned layers only. Absolute positioned layers should only be used for decoration.
4. Why is there an empty space where the slider should be?
It means that there is a JavaScript error on your site which blocks other scripts(for example Smart Slider’s scripts). You can open up the browser debugger window with F12 button and check the console if it shows error or not. If you solve these errors Smart Slider should work fine.
Usual problem is that you have the latest WordPress version, but your theme loads very old jQuery version (1.7 or older) and the WordPress admin bar throws a JavaScript error. In this case, you have to remove the old jQuery from your theme’s functions.php.
If you are unable to solve these problems, feel free to contact us!
5. What should I do when I experience any problem?
Yes you can customize everything for every state. (Hover, normal) The slider comes with Google Web Font support, allowing you to pick from over a dozen font families. You can also use your own font by simply writing its name to the font family field. Check out our tutorial video to learn how to use custom fonts.
8. Can I show multiple instances of slider on one page?
Yes, you can use as many sliders on a page as you want. But you can only use one slider once.
9. How to include a slider in a post or a page?
[smartslider3 slider=Here comes the slider id]
10. How to include a slider into header.php or other PHP files?
<?php echo do_shortcode('[smartslider3 slider=Here comes the slider id]'); ?>
11. Does Smart Slider support sites with SSL?
Of course! Smart Slider use protocol relative urls which works fine on http:// and on https:// too.
Changelog
3.5.1.23 – 11. April 2024
Fix: At WordPress Posts generator if you have a meta data or ACF data with a name already used as a variable, it can get overwritten.
Fix: Security improvements for image uploads.
Fix: Only allow files with WordPress allowed mime types to be uploaded.
Fix: The Resize and Convert to webp features could have issues with images from certain external servers.
3.5.1.22 – 27. February 2024
Feature: Youtube videos cannot be started until they fully loaded, but from now on, we will detect early click actions on them and try to start the video once it loaded, as long as it is not prevented by a browser limitation.
Removed: Black Friday sale notification removed.
3.5.1.21 – 15. November 2023
Fix: Previous widget rendering fix undone. Our widget will render, even when the theme doesn’t supports it, because you can use widgets in themes that way too.
3.5.1.20 – 14. November 2023
Fix: WP Compress compatibility.
Fix: Our widget won’t render, when the theme doesn’t supports it.
Fix: YouTube layer’s video won’t start on mobiles when the video is started before the page completely loaded.
Fix: Row and Column background colors can create an error message in PHP 8.1+, when their color codes only contain numbers.
Fix: The path of some images created PHP errors.
Fix: iOS devices opened parent element links twice, when a text layer was clicked on them.
Removed: A fix for an old Safari bug won’t be needed anymore, as it got resolved quite a while ago.
3.5.1.19 – 14. August 2023
Fix: Some WordPress 6.3 block theme editors (site editor, widget manager or page editor) won’t load next to Smart Slider.
3.5.1.18 – 10. August 2023
Fix: WP Grid Builder conflict, which made WP Grid Builder’s checkbox filtering not work.
Fix: Gutenberg compatibility for WordPress 6.3
Fix: Extra mouse buttons (like “back” button) won’t open links in sliders any longer.
Fix: PHP8 compatibility.
Fix: Sliders did not show up on websites using Perfmatters plugin.
Fix: Wrong slider titles were written out within SiteOrigin Page Builder.
Fix: Sliders sometimes did not load on websites using WP Meteor plugin.
Feature: The “Image Width” setting of arrows and autoplay buttons are now available in the Free version too.
Feature: Playsinline attribute added to all videos, to avoid them being opened fullscreen by default on iOS devices.
3.5.1.17 – 12. June 2023
Feature: Google font list got updated.
Feature: Norwegian language update.
Fix: Jetpack conflict could cause 500 Internal Server Error, or PHP error message appear.
Removed: JetPack Photon image optimizer option got deprecated, because it creates too many possible issues.
3.5.1.16 – 18. May 2023
Fix: Block themes only display shortcodes instead of sliders in WordPress 6.2.1.
Fix: Beaver Builder row duplication issue, when Smart Slider is in the row.
3.5.1.15 – 12. May 2023
Feature: Database managing codes got updated.
Feature: Norwegian translation.
Feature: Hebrew translation.
Fix: Gutenberg plugin conflict.
Fix: PHP8.2.4+ compatibility code.
Fix: Image layer alt tag and title was encoded twice.
Fix: Show editor icon option did not work in Text Editor mode.
Fix: Some database column length limitations got increased.
Fix: Meta (FB, Instagram) image files don’t always have the extension, which is indicated in their filenames. This caused issues with the Resize option.
3.5.1.14 – 16. February 2023
Feature: PHP 8.2 compatibility.
Fix: Touch JS codes won’t affect one slide sliders, for better scrolling experience.
Fix: Shortcode sanitization to strengthen security.
Feature: Youtube layer will support youtube-nocookie.com urls too. But you should note, that still the YouTube And Vimeo Privacy Enhanced Mode setting defines, whether your videos come from youtube.com or from youtube-nocookie.com!
Feature: Private Vimeo url support for Lightbox.
Fix: Not selecting a slider in Avada Builder could cause PHP errors.
Fix: Compatibility fix for WoodMart theme.
Fix: MySQL 8.0 compatibility fix, where “system” is a reserved keyword so we’ll no longer use it as a column name.
Fix: Divi module changes ensure that Divi sets the proper slider. (You might need to re-pick your sliders, if you haven’t changed the default value at the Divi module, as in that case your slider was not saved.)
Fix: Avada Builder compatibility fix to ensure that the slider loads properly into the builder.
Fix: On the Smart Slider admin area the shortcode did not appear correctly when Gutenberg’s “edit slider” button was leading you to the slider settings page.
Other: PHP related conflicts were renamed at the Debug Information to more accurately reflect the cause of the conflict.
3.5.1.7 – 26. May 2022
Fix: Major overhaul of the way the plugin deals with options. This should fix a some bugs and provide improved security. To enhance security the “JavaScript callbacks” option was removed. If you need to write custom codes to manipulate the slider follow this guide to learn how.
Fix: Improved check for valid values at layer content and name.
Fix: Aria-role attribute is renamed to role.
Fix: UIPress.co compatibility.
Fix: Grabbing cursor now properly displays when the slides are switching with mouse grabbing.
Fix: Fix for a Deprecated: preg_match(): Passing null to parameter #4 error in rare cases.
Fix: The CSS code that hides the Bullet thumbnail was strengthened to avoid 3rd party codes overriding it and messing up the layout.
Fix: The style tag for the Slide CSS will only be added to the HTML if it has any content.
Fix: The old default family, Montserrat is not used anymore at the backend so its call was removed.
Fix: Elementor has deprecated the controls_registered method so from 3.6.0 and above we use the new register method to include the Smart Slider widget to Elementor.
Fix: Compatibility fix for Divi on PHP 8.
Other: Translation related improvements, including unifying texts that do the same action on different places.
Other: Spanish translation is updated. Thanks, Rodrigo!
3.5.1.4 – 28. Feburary 2022
Feature: Save Fonts Locally option to cache Google Fonts.
Fix: Updating from really old Smart Slider versions might caused a PHP notice to appear.
Fix: Smart Slider element doesn’t work within Elementor Pro when WooCommerce is also installed on the website.
Fix: Weglot plugin’s language switcher appeared in page builder created sliders.
Fix: Mobile Firefox slide swiping didn’t worked well, as mobile Firefox won’t allow to stop page scroll any longer.
Fix: Better error handling for cases when the WebP support is disabled on the server to avoid PHP errors.
Fix: Dynamic slides didn’t accepted variables in color fields.
Fix: WordPress posts generator code optimization and Elementor compatibility.
Fix: n2-clear class added to the main div that contains the ss3-force-full-width and ss3-fullpage elements to make the Clear Before option work properly.
Fix: Smart Slider display fixed in Tatsu builder.
Fix: Compatibility fix for lower WordPress versions which use the classic widgets.
Other: Links updated in the Help Section to point to more appropriate help articles.
3.5.1.3 – 18. January 2022
Feature: Pagination and Search options in the Dashboard.
Feature: The variable selector is now available at the column and row background colors.
Feature: We’ll use pointer cursor at the thumbnails to indicate that they’re clickable.
Feature: Perfmatter compatibility improvements.
Fix: Overflow hidden is added to vertical thumbnails to allow rounded borders.
Fix: Firefox changed the default background color of the select tag, which creates less contrast between the text and background. We changed it back to white.
Fix: The color picker allowed saving a 7 digit color code, which resulted a bad color.
Fix: Margin and padding values are now translatable in the Slide editor UI.
Fix: Optimize images option now works on full URLs.
Fix: The YouTube layer didn’t always recognize the youtu.be URLs properly.
Fix: Static Overlay background options caused error when the only slide in the slider is a Static Overlay.
Fix: Smart Slider’s custom widget area will now properly display the publishing instructions.
Fix: Background Blur could show up even if the fill mode was not set to Blur fit.
Other: The es_ES.po and es_ES.mo renamed to es.po and es.mo respectively to support all Spanish languages.
3.5.1.2 – 18. November 2021
Feature: The old background animations are allowed again when the fill mode is not fill, but anything else.
Feature: You can now customize the Loading animation delay time.
Fix: Image layer box shadow now shows up in the Slide Editor.
Fix: We fixed an error that happened because Elementor has deprecated the _content_template method we used to create our Elementor Widget.
Fix: Compatibility fixes with Perfmatters.
Fix: The old Smart Slider WordPress widget can be moved back to Elementor using the SMART_SLIDER_ELEMENTOR_WIDGET_ALLOWED constant. As a result the sliders won’t be missing after the 3.4.1.7 update.
Fix: The slider resize didn’t always get triggered on mobile when the device was rotated.
Fix: The When ended → Go to next slide option will no longer trigger the Scroll to slider behavior at the video layers.
Feature: Background blur option for the Blur fit fill mode.
Fix: Divi Builder plugin has strong codes so we use a special ss-p tag to display the texts. An issue was fixed related to these ss-p tags that made them display incorrectly.
Fix: Focus incorrectly stayed on the arrow after slide switching.
Fix: Arrows could get highlighted in Safari.
Other: Better handling of the translation files.
Other: French translation added. Thanks, Jean-Francois!
3.5.1.0 – 5. October 2021
Fix: 100% wide image layer appeared wrong when it had a link on it.
Fix: Text Scale option could create different result in Preview and Editor in extreme cases.
Fix: Column calculation adjusted for better responsive accuracy.
Fix: When the Autoplay is enabled and only one slide is available, this one slide is duplicated to allow the autoplay to work. From now on the dynamic slides are skipped from this process. If there’s a dynamic slide that displays a single slide only, that won’t be duplicated for the autoplay.
Fix: Translate URL now works on the background image of the Content layer.
Fix: We adjusted the strength of the CSS codes affecting the Thumbnail control’s images to avoid 3rd party codes hiding them.
Fix: A wrong path could be generated for the resized thumbnail image at the backend in rare cases.
Fix: Rank Math SEO integration adjusted to avoid possible JavaScript errors at custom post types.
Other: Spanish translation has been updated. Thanks, Rodrigo!
3.5.0.11 – 13. September 2021
Feature: The “Block carousel” feature is now available for free users as well.
Feature: Gutenberg block toolbar is available at the slider. Also, there’s an option to go to the slide editor directly from the block.
Feature: Pressing enter on any control will trigger the control’s action, as if it was clicked.
Fix: Force full width sliders weren’t always properly positioned in Divi.
Fix: SVG paths were wrong in the HTML export of the slider.
Fix: Fix for an output buffer problem related to Themeco Pro theme.
Fix: Fix for a conflict between “Scroll To Slider” and “Use as Anchor > Smooth scroll” that created a weird scrolling.
Fix: The image size box overlapped the thumbnail text on RTL UI.
Fix: Long slider names are cropped when copied/duplicated, to ensure that the new slider can be created.
Fix: On WordPress multisite installation only administrators can have unfiltered_html capability, which is required to be able to access the slider. We’ve modified the error message to reflect this.
Fix: Some Google fonts contain space character, which wasn’t properly encoded.
Fix: Minimum height CSS won’t be added if the value is 0 or smaller.
Fix: We added 50MS timeout to HTMLImageElement.decode() as its promise wasn’t always resolved in Safari.
Fix: Outer positioned controls could create scrollbar, especially on small screens.
Removed: Google font subsets are now removed, as in a browser that supports unicode-range the subset is dynamically served, there’s no need to force it.
Feature: Smart Slider displays a preview image in Gutenberg’s Add Block panel
Feature: New Google fonts added to the font suggestion list.
Fix: Slide title and description are copped at Static Save to avoid reaching server limitation.
Fix: From now on the Wrap After option won’t be available on non-fullwidth rows, as they break automatically based on the space they need.
Fix: Smart Slider now properly appears on Google’s Mobile friendly test.
Fix: Scale to left main animation didn’t appear properly in the Free version.
Fix: Compatibility fix for Yandex.News Feed by Teplitsa which wrongly fetched certain slide data. From now on no part of the slider appears in their fetch.
Fix: Text bar will display the HTML codes in the Slide title and description field again.
Fix: Outer right control position was wrong on RTL.
Fix: Better check for RankMath dependency, so it won’t be loaded on pages where RankMath doesn’t loads its codes.
Fix: Outer left and right controls had wrong width. From now on they’ll have the same width as the slider.
Fix: Themify builder conflict fixed with background videos
Fix: The slider’s force fullwidth calculation could position the slider wrongly when the slider was placed into another “force fullwith” container.
Fix: Error handling for cases when the Top or Bottom focus selector is invalid.
Fix: Allow transparent color as hover background.
Fix: Pixel bug on the bottom of the slide in certain cases.
Fix: Z-index fixes for the Simple and Block type to avoid 3rd parties modify the z-index of the background images.
Fix: Better error handling for cases when the installation didn’t run properly due to some database error.
Fix: WP Bakery Frontend editor will display the slider again when Yoast is enabled.
Fix: From now on the unfiltered_html capability is required to edit the slides on WordPress
3.5.0.9 – 10. June 2021
Feature: From now on your can set an Alt tag for the Slide Thumbnail.
Fix: Absolute positioned layers didn’t rotate.
Fix: Workaround adjusted for the Safari bug which makes non-fullwidth rows create unnecessary line wrap.
Fix: Slider and slide title fields are sanitized.
Fix: Arrow style didn’t work in preview.
Fix: Empty background color caused PHP error.
Fix: Force fullwidth slider might appeared offscreen in rare cases.
Fix: Compatibility fix for Admin 2020 plugin.
Fix: Slider flickered in Gutenberg editor in rare cases.
Fix: Nested, not full width Absolute layer width couldn’t be changed.
Other: Editor role no longer gets access to Smart Slider on new installations.
3.5.0.8 – 02. June 2021
Warning: Smart Slider 3.5 is not backwards compatible! Before upgrading check the possible issues and their solutions you might see after updating to 3.5.
New: Speed improvements which help you make Smart Slider 3 pass Core Web Vitals.
Removed: jQuery dependency is removed. From now on Smart Slider only uses vanilla JavaScript.
Removed: px+ from padding and margin values. From now on everything will be fix px value.
Removed: Non adaptive font resizing is removed, and from now on everything will be adaptive. If you need the adaptive scaling at the layers you created before the update which previously used non-adaptive scaling, turn on “Legacy Font Scale” at Slider settings > Developer tab.
Feature: Async option for non-primary CSS files.
Feature: Horizontal mouse wheel control option.
Fix: Compatibility fix for Cachify plugin.
Fix: Compatibility fix for WooCommerce Blocks plugin.
Fix: Compatibility fix for A3 Lazy Loading plugin.
Fix: Compatibility fix for Woodmart theme.
Fix: Compatibility fix for Flatsome theme.
Fix: Compatibility fix for Newspaper theme’s tagDiv Composer.