How to Create a Video Slider in WordPress (Easy Tutorial)

One of the questions we frequently get from our readers is how to add a video slider to a WordPress site.

If you are seeing high bounce rates, then maybe your website is boring or poorly designed. Video sliders are a good way to liven up your home page or any other page on your website to capture the attention of your visitors.

In this article, we will show you how to easily create a video slider in WordPress.

Why Use a Video Slider in WordPress?

Many WordPress users struggle with making their websites stand out and keeping visitors hooked. This is where video sliders can help.

Images are great, but videos are even better for making your WordPress website more engaging. First impressions matter and can be the difference between a visitor staying to check out your products and services or leaving only to never return.

Plus, you can also use videos to showcase product demonstrations, reviews, or other promotional content.

For example, a real estate website could show virtual walkthroughs of properties. Travel websites can display hotel recommendations, travel destinations, and cool tour experiences to engage potential clients.

A video slider is a slider that contains only videos rather than static images. Here are some potential ways you can use video sliders for your business:

• Create a dedicated slider with short testimonials from happy customers.
• Share videos of detailed case studies.
• Show product or service reviews.
• Demonstrate different product features and how they work.

With that in mind, we’ll go over how you can easily create video sliders in WordPress so you can engage your audience. Here’s a quick overview of all the steps we will cover in this guide:

Ready? Let’s jump right in!

Adding a Video Slider to Your WordPress Site

The easiest way to add video sliders to your website is by using a plugin.

We recommend Soliloquy because it’s the best WordPress slider plugin on the market. While most WordPress slider plugins slow down your website, Soliloquy is super fast and won’t hurt your page load time.

What’s more, Soliloquy supports multiple video platforms, including YouTube, Vimeo, and Wistia. So, you can simply enter the video URL if it’s already published.

The plugin is also mobile responsive. This means that you can use it to create video slides that work on every device and screen size. On top of all, it allows for multiple slide types so that you can add videos, images, and content as well.

Now, the first thing you need to do is install and activate the Soliloquy plugin. For more details on installation, you can check out our post on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, simply navigate to Soliloquy » Add New.

On the next screen, you’ll need to give your new video slider a title. Then, go ahead and click on the button that says ‘Select Files from Other Sources.’

Do note that Soliloquy also allows you to upload videos directly, but we don’t recommend this. For more details, you can see our guide on why you should never upload a video to WordPress.

A pop-up window will appear where you must click the ‘Insert Video Slide’ option.

Here’s where you will need to add the title, video URL, caption, and alt text of the video.

Go ahead and fill in all of the details based on your video.

In the ‘Image URL’ field, you must also provide a placeholder image for the video. This image will be used when the video is not playing. It also helps to improve your WordPress performance because the video only loads when the user clicks on it.

Then, in the ‘Video URL’ field, you can find the video URL in your media library or directly from a video hosting site like YouTube.

You also have the option to provide a caption for the video. If you decide to do so, we recommend writing something engaging that also describes what people can expect when they click play.

If you want to add another video slide, then just click on the ‘Add Another Video Slide’ button.

From there, you’ll need to upload the title, video URL, image URL, caption, and alt text of the next video.

With that done, you can repeat the process for all of the video slides you want to add.

After that, simply click the ‘Insert into Slider’ button.

Your video slides will appear on the new slide screen like this.

If you need to make changes to them, you can always click the pencil icon to edit the video or click the ‘Inactive’ icon to make it inactive.

From here, you can go to the ‘Configuration’ tab to customize how you want your video slider to appear.

On this screen, you can toggle several settings.

For example, you can change the slide dimensions to fit your web design. You can also customize the slider and caption position so that they align with other elements on your page.

Another option you may want to consider is whether or not to allow video autoplay.

You can set the video slide to automatically play when a visitor lands on the page so that they are forced to watch your content. However, please keep it mind it could slow down the page speed since the browser also has to load the video.

The good thing about Soliloquy is that the plugin can also optimize your video slider for mobile devices.

But you need to manually set up the settings.

To do this, let’s head to the ‘Mobile’ tab. Once inside, you can create mobile slider images and show captions so that people know what they will be watching before they click to play.

Now, you’re ready to add the slider to your WordPress blog or website.

Go ahead and click the ‘Publish’ button in the right-side panel.

Displaying the Video Slider in WordPress

To embed your slider, you might want to create or edit a post or page where you want to display it.

When in the WordPress editor, you can click the ‘+’ button to add the Soliloquy block to your page. To make the process easier, you can type in ‘Soliloquy’ in the search bar.

Then, let’s select the video slider you’ve just created from the Soliloquy widget and insert it into your page.

With that done, go ahead and click onthe ‘Publish’ or ‘Update’ button at the top.

That’s all. You can now preview your post to see your video slides in action.

Here’s what it might look like:

If you are still using the classic WordPress editor, then you can also add a video slider to any WordPress page or post.

You will have to copy the shortcode located on the Soliloquy page, where all of your video sliders are stored. Then, simply insert that shortcode into your content.

For more information, you can check out our guide on how to insert a shortcode in WordPress.

Bonus: Adding a Featured Content Slider to WordPress

On top of adding video sliders to your website, you may also want to add a featured content slider to your WordPress pages.

Aside from showcasing your best blog posts, you can add featured content sliders to highlight featured products from your online store, share reviews, show off portfolio items, or display popular categories.

Unlike video sliders, a featured content slider can show a combination of images and links on the slide.

All you have to do is install the ‘Featured Content Addon’ in Soliloquy.

The next step is to add the content, links, and descriptions of your multimedia files, similar to how you did with the video slider.

For a more in-depth tutorial, you can check out our blog post on how to properly add a featured content slider in WordPress.

We hope this article helped you add video sliders in WordPress using Soliloquy. You may also want to check out our list of the best video hosting sites for bloggers, marketers, and businesses or our guide on how to optimize videos for your WordPress website.

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