Slider

You basically have a couple options, either the WP Header which will show on the front page only, or you can use a widget to load an image or slider in the “showcase” widget position.

Featured images will be only available for the posts and pages within the content area only.

I’m not sure if you found the setup tutorials on my site for this theme, but if not, you can find them here for Preference Lite (and also the Pro version, although this is a commercial theme and requires registration)…

https://www.styledthemes.com/preference-lite-setup

For the widget option, this will be a text widget, unless you’re using a slider that has a widget. For the text widget method with a slider shortcode, I recommend the Advanced Text Widget plugin because it offers extra settings such as disable the title, publish it to select pages, etc.

Thank you so much for the quick response. I now see that there is a “Showcase Header” option within the widget area. I am a bit confused about what to do with it though. How do I literally “load” my images into that widget area? Do I have to do it with the Text Widget and just use html to pull from my media? Thanks for clarifying this for me!

You’re very welcome… if you are loading an image into the showcase area (widget area), then a text widget can be used with html like this:
<img src="path-to-image" alt="description" />

However, because the default text widget in WordPress does not have the ability to disable the title, your title field has to be blank. However, the alternative is to install the “Advanced Text Widget” which lets you use a title, but only as reference for the admin side. You also get a setting to let you choose what pages this will be seen.

Regarding images, you will want to upload your image to the Media Library and then copy the full url path to it by clicking on the edit link for the image. That is the path you will use in your “path-to-image” part. Also, I recommend using an image that will fit in that showcase area which is 1170px wide. Your height can be any height, but it’s best to crop and size your image first before uploading.

I attempted just using the normal text widget, as well as the Advanced one. In both scenarios I used the sample code you gave me “<img src=”path-to-image” alt=”description” />” — and I placed in my specific image URL. The result was that same bit of code appearing in the site, directly above the image slider/header area. I have a header image uploaded and in use, so that simple line of code was just sitting right on top of that image. I feel like there must be something simple I am doing wrong. If you have any ideas, I’m still tinkering with it and I’d love to hear what you think.

Do you have a link to this site to show where this is? I will take a look.

I wish I could but the site isn’t live yet. I have an under construction page up now so it’s not going to be visible to you. I am making some progress however. I was able to add an image using the default text widget. I used the code you gave me and then I plugged in my URL for the image and the only thing I did different this time was I pre-cropped the image to 1170 wide. Not sure if that did the trick, or if was just doing something wrong before, but I’m not worried about that anymore I don’t think! The next challenge I’ve seen is now I am not sure how to add multiple “slides” and how to add the cool forward/backward buttons on them, as well as captions to the slides. (Kind of like the ones on the model site have.) I didn’t see anything about how to do that in the user guides. Is that something you can tell me about? Also, is there a way to make these slides “clickable” or link to a specific page once loaded into the slide area?
I’m gonna go ahead and give you the link to the site even though it’s got the under construction page up. TheAcademyAtWellSpring.com

I usually recommend people crop and size their images before uploading when using WordPress. In fact I even encourage people to remove the media size settings when they install WP….but for this theme, doing an image 1170 wide, and of course, whatever height they want, is the best way to maintain its quality.

As for the slider navigation, really depends on what slider you use because there are so many to choose but not all are great with very few as being good. For my Pro version of Preference, I use WidgetKit for the demo but I also customized a template for the slider. Overall, a good slider which is also responsive (which is important).

The demo for the Lite version though is using the WP built-in custom header, so no slider tutorial for third party sliders…with exception to the pro version tutorials.

To make the images clickable with a link, you can do that with any slider you choose that lets you do that, while others are very basic. For the WP custom header method, this isn’t so flexible without customizing the code.

Ah, I see. I was thinking that the Lite Version had the slider functions built in, but you are saying that you have to add a plug-in or widget slider in order to do that, right?
Let me ask this, if I was to purchase the Pro version of “Preference” does it already have that slider functionality? I am just trying to decide how much time I have on my hands to dig into the more complicated issues. I love the look of the theme though and would like to take advantage of using it for this site b/c I think it would work well.

Correct… the Lite version has a widget space for the user’s own slider but also has the option to use the WP Header feature (front page only). However, with the Pro version, you will still need to download the latest version of the slider (using Widgetkit), but the tutorials for the Pro version does take you through step by step to set this up, including installing the custom slider template (included in the PRo) I made for this particular one (the demo site for the Pro version shows what it looks like).

Hello again, I wanted to say thanks for the help you’ve given so far on this. I have made some progress and the site is coming along nicely. I had another question for you. Is there a way to have the slider active on the home page ONLY (when using Widgetkit to activate a slider)? Or, does that have to be done using the Advanced Text Widget? You had said this before up in your first response to me, but when I tried to use that one I wasn’t sure what to do with it and it was talking about PHP code which is over my head. I was hoping there was a way to disable the slider on select pages some other way.
Also, one other thing, can you tell me where in the CSS code I can modify the default color that is in the drop-down menu backgrounds? It is that blue color, and the “hover” color on the drop downs is a lighter blue. I’m having trouble locating that in the stylesheets for some reason. Thank you!

There’s a few ways, but one is to use the Advanced text widget for sliders that use shortcodes. This widget has a setting at the bottom of it to publish it to the home, front-page, pages, etc. The other option is to use a plugin like Dynamic Widgets, which adds a setting to “all” widgets and lets you publish the widget where you want. Although this one has some learning curve, but for any of these plugins, the developers do offer instructions. If you are using the Widgetkit (which is associated with my Pro version of Preference), then perhaps Dynamic Widgets or perhaps check out Widget Logic plugin which uses WordPress Conditional tags to publish where you want the widget to show.

https://codex.www.ads-software.com/Conditional_Tags

Regarding the submenu backgrounds, here is a tutorial about that:

https://www.styledthemes.com/preference-lite-setup/104-change-the-submenu-background

Just wanted to say thanks for all the support on this, Widget Logic worked great + I was able to edit the submenu colors as well! Thanks again.

You’re very welcome Kevin and happy to hear the Widget Logic option worked and the tutorial for the submenu ??

hye..i’m new using wordpress..
i have same problem with kevin..i already follow the step that u give to kevin, but it still cannot display the slider picture at the header of my website.

hi haniey_pisces…because this thread is already set as resolved, and if you are having a similar problem, contact me directly then from my website https://www.styledthemes.com (footer link) and provide me with details on what you are using for the slider, what page to display it on, and of course a link to your site. Thanks ??