How to Add a Progress Bar in Your WordPress Posts

Have you ever wanted to add a progress bar in your WordPress site? You can use it to show progress on a fundraising campaign, milestones for specific project that you are working on, etc. Recently one of our readers asked how they can add a progress bar in a WordPress post. In this article, we will show you how to add a progress bar in your WordPress posts, pages, and widgets.

First thing you need to do is install and activate the Progress Bar plugin. It works out of the box, and there are no settings for you to configure.

Simply edit a post or page where you want to display the progress bar and add the shortcode in this format:

[wppb progress=50]

This will show an animated progress bar to indicate 50% progress using the default blue color.

Pretty easy right?

You can also customize the shortcode to change colors, add text to the progress bar, show currency instead of percentage, and more. Let’s take a look at some of these customization options.

Adding Text to the Progress Bar

In the example above, you can see that our progress bar does not actually mention what it is about. You can change that by adding some helpful text within the progress bar using the text attribute in the shortcode.

[wppb progress=75 text="Progress so far"]

This will display your text on top of the progress bar, and it will look like this:

Showing Currency Instead of Percentage in Progress Bar

By default, the progress bar shows completion percentage, but you can change that to a currency if you’re using it for a fundraising campaign.

Here is how you would use the shortcode to display the currency and indicate both the target amount and the amount collected so far.

[wppb progress="$250/1000" text="$250/$1000 Raised"]

It will look like this on your website:

If you want to show the text outside the progress bar, then you can modify the shortcode like this:

[wppb progress="$250/1000" text="$250/$1000 Raised" location="after"]

Changing Progress Bar Colors and Appearance

Progress Bar plugin comes with a few colors and appearance options that you can use. The built-in color options are blue, red, yellow, orange, and green. However, you can use any color that you want. You can add a flat or animated progress bar.

Here is how you will use the shortcode to use each option:

Orange progress bar
[wppb progress=50 option=orange]

Animated candy stripe progress bar in red
[wppb progress=50 option="animated-candystripe red"]

Candy stripe progress bar in green color
[wppb progress=50 option="candystripe green"]

A default blue progress bar with candy stripe
[wppb progress=50 option=candystripe]

A flat progress bar in purple color
[wppb progress=50 option=flat color=purple]

A flat candy stripe progress bar in brown
[wppb progress=50 option="flat candystripe" color=brown]

This is how these progress bars will look on your site:

Adding Progress Bar in WordPress Sidebar Widgets

First you will need to enable shortcodes for text widgets in WordPress. You can do this by adding the following line of code in your theme’s functions.php file or in a site-specific plugin.

add_filter('widget_text','do_shortcode');

You can now visit Appearance » Widgets page and add a text widget to your sidebar. Use the progress bar shortcode in the text widget just like you would use it in a post or page. Here is a code we used on our demo site:

[wppb progress="$2500/$4500" option="animated-candystripe red" fullwidth=true]

Raised: $2500
Goal: $4500

<a href="example.com">Donate here</a>

This is how it looked on our test site:

We hope this article helped you add beautiful progress bar in your WordPress posts or pages. You may also want to see our guide on How to Add a PayPal Donate Button in WordPress.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

To leave a comment please visit How to Add a Progress Bar in Your WordPress Posts on WPBeginner.

How to Hire a Social Media Manager: The 12 Bedrock Habits That the Best Managers Have in Common

What makes a great social media manager?

More specifically, what habits make an effective social media manager?

What do the best social media managers practice every day that makes them amazing at what they do?

There seems to be a lot of good advice out there about the best social media tactics used by marketers—tactics that might work great right away but are often not sustainable.

I was keen to find the best habits. And to understand what traits would help a person become more effective as a social media manager. I’m excited to share with you what I found.

 

Why is it important to hire a good social media manager?

• From 2010 to 2013, the number of social media jobs grew 1357%.
• From 2013 to 2014, there was a 37% increase in social media jobs.
• As of writing, a search on LinkedIn for “social media” jobs has nearly 60,000 results — and that’s just in the United States.

There have even been discussions of having a Chief Social Officer as an official role in companies.

Social media has grown into its own career path. And while there are resources that teach social media tactics, they don’t explain the traits that make for a successful social media manager. This makes it difficult for someone who wants to take a career path in social marketing and for hiring managers to hire an effective social media manager.

Social media managers have a variety of responsibilities including:

1. Managing a publishing calendar
2. Scheduling posts
3. Curating content
4. Engaging with customers and partners
5. Listening to networks for brand mentions and keywords
6. Reviewing analytics and determining next steps
7. Following up with connections and on projects.
8. Check in with the rest of the company for announcements to publish and
9. Running experiments to optimize social media posts

And that’s not even all of it.

If we think about software engineering, we can’t teach someone C++ and expect her to be an effective engineer. She must learn and develop the mental frameworks necessary to work through problems.

Likewise, we can’t teach someone to put sentences together and expect him to be an effective writer. He must develop his own methods of thinking and understand who he’s writing for.

So how do we develop those mental frameworks to become more effective at managing social media?

I dug in to figure out the habits of the most effective social media managers.

Be in the business of content.

1. Have go-to sources to curate great content.

Curation is a cornerstone of social media marketing and also one of the most time-consuming tasks. Great social media managers devour content and know where to find amazing content that would interest their followers. No need to search, you know where it’s at.

Kevan Lee of Buffer keeps a collection of RSS feeds in Feedly to help with curating his monthly newsletter. This is what his feedly collection looks like:

To save time, Neil Patel suggests curating in batches. To avoid content consumption consuming your whole day, assign a specific block of time dedicated to curation, say 9am-10am. Once it hits 10am, move on to the next thing.

How to develop this habit:

1. Create a feedly account and add your favorite RSS feeds to it.
2. Have a list of non-RSS websites where you consistently find high-quality content.
3. Set aside a specific time to consume and curate content.
4. Consume said content.
5. Curate amazing pieces.
6. Repeat steps 3-5.

2. Always be in ideation mode.

One of the toughest feelings in social media is running out of post ideas. An effective marketer is always in ideation mode. Whether that means getting ideas while we’re on a walk and see kids playing or while in line for ice cream and noticing how the shop does customer service

It’s about making connections between things over different time periods or different disciplines.

Maria Popova of Brain Pickings, a self-titled “reader who writes,” publishes three blog posts a day, Monday-Friday, and most all of her posts are 1,000 words or more (often, much more). She’s able to produce such a large volume of content because she actively makes connections between ideas as she reads.

By being in ideation mode, we will constantly have ideas running through our minds which can result in blog posts, social updates, and a healthy social media publishing pipeline.

How to develop this habit:

1. As you go about your day, be aware of what’s going on around you.
2. Think about how your experiences could be tied back to a piece of content.
3. Analyze scenarios to find a perspective in which a story can be told.
4. Write down any and all ideas you have (I like to use Evernote).
5. Stay in ideation mode.

3. Keep a swipe file.

Keep a collection of tested and proven advertising assets like headlines, graphics, and frameworks – often referred to as a swipe file.

Leo Widrich, co-founder of Buffer, embraces the idea of copying the hell out of others. Likewise, Austin Kleon, author of Steal Like An Artist, explains that everything is a remix, and keeps his own swipe file for inspiration.

I’ve been growing my own swipe file with headline formulas and notes from books I’ve read.

As a social media manager, here are a few things to collect:

• Great Twitter and Facebook posts
• Templates of headlines that work for social media updates
• Images for inspiration
• Stock photos (or know where to go for all the free stock photos you could ever ask for)
• Create templates in Canva so you can quickly put together images for social

How to develop this habit:

1. Be aware of great copy and images as you consume content.
2. Take screenshots when you see a good image or ad and save them into an Evernote folder, or a folder on your desktop.
3. Copy and paste great headlines into a file for future reference.
4. Most importantly, keep collecting content that’s inspiration for your own creative process.

Focus on good communication.

4. Listen to what’s going on on social.

Some managers forget the “social” in social media and don’t engage with their supporters. By listening to what’s going on with social media, we can find out what people are saying about our brand and engage with them.

JetBlue has demonstrated that social listening is a high priority for them. They have a team of over 25 employees that specifically handle social media listening and communicating with customers on Twitter. They’ve even staged a welcome home parade for one of their customers after reading a tweet about her flight home.

@Alexa_Burrows    Little something to remember us by. pic.twitter.com/VB3q0ARiva

— JetBlue Airways (@JetBlue) May 28, 2014

Keep your eyes and ears open for what users are saying about your brand so you can catch them when they’re thinking of you.

How to develop this habit:

1. Set up alerts for your brand name (and various spellings of it) on Mention, Buzzsumo, or Google Alerts.
2. Set aside 30 minutes a day to review and respond to mentions of your company.

5. Be a relationship-builder.

Entrepreneurs inherently understand that relationships and interacting with a wide range of people are crucial for a successful business. Social media managers must treat relationships on social as an important part of growing a business. These relationships include competitors, investors, customers, employees, members of the media, potential clients, and so on.

In addition to social listening and engaging, we should be intentional in networking and building relationships. We should focus on giving – helping and serving – rather than trying to make a quick buck off our supporters.

Jeremy Levine, Founder and CEO of Playdraft, made it a high priority to build relationships with investors and executives on Twitter. As a result, he made connections with three of the biggest names in the startup world.

How to build this habit (hat tip to social media examiner):

1. Define the type of people you want to connect with – potential customers, influencers, current customers, businesses, etc.
2. Come up with a list of 20 people who you want to develop a relationship with. It could be a customer who has engaged with you on Twitter multiple times, a business you’re hope to close a deal with in the future, or an influencer.
3. Set aside an hour each week to interact with your top 50 contacts whether that be through social media or a written note.
4. Repeat those three steps every week.

6. Collaborate with team members.

It’s normal for social media to be handled by an entire team now, so it’s important to have that team working together seamlessly. An effective social media manager isn’t just focused on their own ideas, but is also open to the ideas of their teammates (whether or not they’re on the social media team).

If team members have ideas for social, don’t turn them down. Hear them out even if you completely disagree. You never know if you’ll get some new ideas from them.

This is a concept known as synergizing – working with someone with a completely different view. When two opposing views collaborate, then their combined efforts would be worth more than the sum of the parts. 1+1 could potentially equal 3.

Social media isn’t a one player game. We can only write so many blog posts and curate so many pieces of content by ourselves. So we should rely on others to help us. To be effective at social media, we must be open to implementing new ideas from new people.

How to develop this habit:

1. Schedule a monthly brainstorm meeting.
2. Have every attendee spend 10 minutes writing down all their ideas.
3. Go around and share the ideas with the group. Record every idea.
4. Set aside the ideas that the group likes best from those.
5. Use the prioritized list to learn more about the idea and brainstorm ideas off of it.

Buffer’s Awesome and business accounts let your entire team contribute to publishing content on social profiles. Slack is the go-to communication tool for team members to drop ideas as they come to mind. There are various tools to help social media teams work more effective, find what works for your team and run with it.

Be analytical.

7. Always be testing.

An effective social media marketer is metrics-driven and curious and wants to find out how to do things better. We want to get the most out of our work, so we should test and optimize our social efforts.

“What if we try this type of headline? Or this hashtag? Or a GIF instead of a static photo? Or a video?!”

Brittany Leaning, content strategist at HubSpot and co-author of Twitter for Dummies, says we should “test everything!”

@bjcorey @outsidesource @uxcelsior @sgraymackenzie That’s the best! You should test EVERYTHING. Just make sure it’s controlled. #InboundHour

— Brittany Leaning (@bleaning) June 18, 2015

Testing is important because your audience is not static. Your audience or their preferences might change and it’s important to be aware of those changes. A/B testing will keep your social efforts evolving with them. Buffer does a great job of this and goes in depth about how you can test your social media channels.

How to develop this habit:

1. Come up with the variables you want to test.
2. Determine how long you will test each variable for.
3. Craft social media updates for each variable.
4. Publish variations and record the results.
5. Repeat for next set of variables.

It helps to have a backlog of ideas to test and consistently revisit, reflect, and take action on each test.

8. Measure and analyze metrics to understand what to do more of.

Effective social media managers are analytical and can look at social media engagement metrics, analyze them, and draw actionable information. This means looking into reach, sharing, lead generation, and sales metrics, associating them with experiments you ran and understanding what worked and what didn’t, then setting a goal moving forward.

Analyzing results and ROI allows you to understand what works and build a playbook around your efforts, making it repeatable and scalable to grow the business.

Here’s how HubSpot’s social dashboard looks. We can pull reports as often as we’d like to review our performance.

How to develop this habit:

1. Determine what your most important metric is.
2. Set up the tools you need to measure – whether it’s natively in Facebook Insights or Twitter Analytics or through an external tool like Buffer or HubSpot.
3. Block out time to review the data.
4. Decide what your next action(s) will be to improve that metric based off that data.

Systemize your work.

9. Document your processes.

There are various aspects to go into crafting the perfect social media post, but it’s a lot to remember. An effective social media marketer documents their processes of curation, creation, and publishing – a checklist if you will – of exactly what they do and how they do it.

The growth team at Sidekick documents everything. We have playbooks for content creation, content promotion, social media, and various other projects, so a new hire can look at the documentation and quickly jump into the project. Likewise, if we ever need to jump back to an old project, we know what to do.

Here are some questions to ask when creating your social media processes:

• What process do you use to curate content?
• How do you come up with a headline?
• What type of image do you use?
• What tool do you use to schedule the piece of content to be published?
• What reports do you pull?
• How do you manipulate the data?

Make it into a process and document it so anyone can do it and know what to look for.

How to develop this habit:

1. Create templates for documenting your process.
2. As you work through a project, ask yourself, “Is this repeatable?”
3. After you complete the project, ask yourself if what you just completed is something you expect to keep doing.
4. If so, write down what you did step-by-step.
5. Refine the documentation as you continue to perform the task and repeat the project.

10. Automate tasks.

Social media managers already have a lot to do, so to be more effective, they automate what they can.

Here’s an example for curation:

• Use Pocket to curate your favorite pieces of content.
• Set up an integration using If This Then That so that when you favorite an item in Pocket, it’ll get added to your Buffer queue.
• Go into Buffer to rewrite your headline and add an image to the post.

You can also use services like Simply measured and SumAll to schedule and automate your social media reports.

How to develop this habit:

1. Continue doing projects.
2. Note tasks you find yourself repeating.
3. Use services like If This Then That or Zapier to automate those tasks.

11. Create a work cadence and stick to it.

It’s easy to get overwhelmed with all the tasks that come with being a social media marketer. It helps to set aside blocks of time for each task throughout the week so you know what to do and when to do it.

Michael Hyatt, a writer on productivity and social media, suggest controlling your time by designing your ideal week.

By sticking to this schedule you set for yourself, you set time limits on each task and avoid wasting time.

Bonus

12. Improvise.

Sometimes we can get so deep into routine, and focused on being effective, that we forget things won’t always work out the way we planned.

A customer might unexpectedly tweet a negative comment. A competitor might publicly challenge your company. In these cases, it’s important to remain calm and understand how to respond with the company’s best interests in mind.

In some cases, a random event might be an opportunity to make noise on social media. Take a look at how Oreo took advantage of the Super Bowl blackout with a tweet.

Sarah Hofstetter, president of 360i, the agency that handled game-day tweeting for Oreo, told Buzzfeed, “The big question is, what happens when everything changes, when you go off script? That was where it got fun.”

How to develop this habit:

1. Break out of routine every now and then and play your day by ear.
2. Start your morning off differently.
3. Change up your workout.
4. Take a dance class.
5. As you try new things, your mind will learn to make new connections, and your ability to improvise will improve.

Conclusion – Build Better Social Media Habits

As we strive to accomplish our goals, we’re always learning to become more effective in what we do.

Effectiveness isn’t improved by simple tactics, but by developing good habits that become second nature to us.

To become more effective social media managers, we have to think past the publishing and pretty pictures and “17 ways to grow your Twitter following.” It’s less about tactics and more about long-term habits and strategies. As stated in the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey, “We are what we repeatedly do.”

An important thing to note is that you shouldn’t try to build all of these habits at the same time. Figure out which habit would be most impactful for the company and work from there.

What habits are you working on? Are there any habits you would recommend? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

Image sources: Offerpop, Sidekick, Michael Hyatt, Oreo Twitter, Pablo, Unsplash, IconFinder

The post How to Hire a Social Media Manager: The 12 Bedrock Habits That the Best Managers Have in Common appeared first on Social.

Google: Right to be Forgotten? We're Not Complying

Google limits forget-me-now service to the European market only. The search behemoth says that widening this on a global scale is 'bad for the internet' and will not win support.

A Bedtime Story – (Product Review Discussion)

This is a "bedtime story" -all about my new bed, and why it's SO awesome.

I also want to share the entire process of this "product review" - to give you some creative ideas for your own reviews...

First, check out Nodical Bed.

If you're shopping for a new mattress, and you want the BEST one on the market, be sure to use our exclusive coupon code: VIP100 to save $100.

I'll tell you WHY I decided to review this (seemingly unrelated) product, what I negotiated with the company (and why), how this opportunity came about, and how I'm promoting it for them. As you know, I have a business/marketing blog and a food/travel blog - so this is all about "creative angles". This should easily give you some creative ideas for your own blog!

How I Got This Product Review Opportunity

This opportunity with Nodical came through a professional connection. The person handling their outreach is someone I met online through my online circles, and then met offline at local meetups.

I said local, but it was actually through a few groups in Atlanta (where Nodical is also based) which is about 3-4 hours from where I live in TN.

My advice: get out to local meetups and business & blogger events every chance you get! The connections you'll make in person are priceless.

Of course, I can't be "out & about" all the time, so I rely on virtual groups as well - and Facebook is full of them! Look for blogging groups, or groups in your niche, and put the word out that you're looking for opps. LinkedIn is a great spot for connections as well.

You need a Media Kit, and you should be doing your own outreach as well. A great way to get started is to join brand networks like Social Spark. Read Bloggers & Brands too - it includes tons of "sources" and even templates to use for outreach.

Why I Chose To Review The Nodical Bed

As I mentioned, I have two blogs - and neither of them are about beds. ClickNewz, which you're reading now, is all about online business & marketing. My other blog is a food & travel blog, specifically about the low carb diet.

When they got in touch with me, I listened anyway.

Mainly because I've been suffering from muscle aches and repetitive stress injuries, and insomnia - which sucks. As you know, I recently got a reclining office chair for exactly this reason! And of course, sleep (er, lack of) has a serious impact on weight loss. So there was definitely some potential for creative tie-ins there...

I did my research on the company as well - which you should ALWAYS do. They make the best memory foam mattresses on the market, and at a price anyone can afford. So they're both cheaper AND higher quality than their competition.

Plus they're an amazing company. You'll see what I mean in my videos.

Product Review Negotiations

Typically I would charge around $3,000 to get on board with a big promotional campaign. That said, I'm ALWAYS open to negotiations - especially if I can bring a great deal or a cool product to my audience.

Keep that in mind: "everything is negotiable". That alone will serve you VERY well in your business. A "no" or a lack of response even, is never the end of the line. Ever. It's all about talking to the right person, and finding the right combination of benefits for everyone involved (the merchant, the marketer AND the market).

For this review, which was going to require video - and A LOT of creativity, I negotiated a few simple things. I decided I was willing to do the review & promo within their budget (and more so: their concerns about working with bloggers for outreach), so I waived my usual rates and negotiated some fun trades...

Remember, there are no set rules about this sort of things. Figure out what would make you happy, what would make the merchant happy they worked with you, and most importantly: what would appeal to (and serve) your audience best.

You heard one of my "negotiations" in the video above. They sent me a Nodical Bed so I could do an "unboxing video" and also test out the actual product. I asked them to also send one for Slim... TOO. He's an aging Great Dane at over 6 years old, and let's face it - he gets more "likes" than I do, LOL. They agreed to make a custom Nodical Bed just for my "furry best friend". How awesome is that?!

The other thing I negotiated, which is one of my favorite "perks" when working with a cool company, is an exclusive discount for my readers. They agreed to offer a very generous $100 discount (code: VIP100) to my audience. Bingo!

I also requested a tracking link (which you can see that I used in my links here), and 4% commission on any sales that resulted from my recommendations.

Product Review Promotion

Before I could actually test and review the product, I needed to unbox it and set it up. The "unboxing video" was part of the negotiation, so I took a lot of videos and photos in the process of doing that. To get the ball rolling, I combined some fun photos into a slideshow and created a video with those:

This is just a really simple slideshow created in iPhoto, which comes preinstalled on any Mac computer. I exported it, then you can use a video editor (like iMovie) to add even more effects. Here's another example slideshow video on my low carb channel.

Getting IN and OUT of that box was quite the challenge (lol), so I decided to use that video footage on my Facebook Page - just for fun:

Lynn, Slim... and a Box

I thought you'd be interested to know how I got IN the box, in the fun little slideshow video I shared the other day. LOL. Unfortunately, my first attempt did NOT get caught on video, where I fell and injured myself. Stay tuned for the official Nodical Bed Unboxing Video. In the meantime, go to: https://nodicalbed.com/?utm_medium=VIP&utm_source=Lynn+Terry&utm_campaign=affiliate+review (and use coupon code "VIP100" to see our exclusive discount at Nodical!) - See you soon. ;-)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZFM9emIKKo <- Is the video I'm referring to, in case you missed that one. *cheers*

Posted by Lynn Terry on Saturday, August 1, 2015

Remember, you don't have to be perfect - you just need to be REAL.

That's why companies and brands hire bloggers: for reality, candid discussions, and to create real conversations with real people about their products.

Next, I broke the video up into segments. You saw the first video above - introducing Nodical Bed and basically discussing why the company and the product are so cool.

Next, we unboxed and set up Slim's new Nodical Bed:

And then I did mine:

I personally thought all of that was a bit boring, and I get sick of hearing myself talk...

Geez, I can be so chatty! lol. So next, I did a "fast forward" video to show just how quick & easy it is to unbox and set up a new Nodical Bed restore mattress:

That was much better, don't you think?

iMovie (on the Mac) makes it super easy to edit videos, including the speed and audio and adding music. I still have PC's in the office (two at the moment) but my Macbooks are priceless for video editing and product creation!

Moving Forward...

Knowing I had negotiated this product review, I started priming my market with discussions in that direction. It was already "no secret" that I was struggling with back pain and insomnia, as I'd been talking openly about that across my blogs & social channels. That's what blogging should be all about, by the way: real conversations about what's going on in your life.

I discussed it a bit more on my low carb blog as well, specifically about how lack of sleep stalled my weight loss (including a visual graph illustrating my plateau).

With my low carb blog, I can easily tie this promo in with FitBit, which is another company I want to work with - and which tracks your quality of sleep along with other healthy factors.

Of course "good sleeps" tie in nicely with productivity, which is a hot topic here at ClickNewz, and also with repetitive stress injuries - which are common with people that work online or with a laptop for long periods.

And let's face it - some of us are just plain getting old and knotted up, lol.

To state the obvious, this post you're reading now also serves as a great example of a creative angle. I told you all about the Nodical Bed, but from the perspective of doing product reviews. Cool, right?!

So there you have it: A bed. Creative tie-ins. Lots of tips for negotiating and promoting products. My advice: get creative, be real, and have FUN. And of course take lots of photos & videos so you can repurpose them in lots of different ways - on your blog, and across your social channels.

* * Questions, comments? I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Best,

p.s. You can learn more about Nodical Bed using my link, and don't forget to use our exclusive "VIP100" discount code to save $100 on yours!

I am LOVING this product so far. You get 100 sleeps to test it out (they have a 100-night guarantee), but I can already tell you: this is the first time I haven't woke up stiff... in as long as I can possibly remember. WOW. As for Slim, I can't even get him out of his new bed -LOL. The Nodical beds are super awesome...

Bing Tests Emoji Keyboard

Not long after becoming the first search engine to allow users to search with emojis, Bing is testing an emoji keyboard.

Which is the Best WordPress Slider? Performance + Quality Compared

Are you looking to add a slider in your WordPress site? Tired of going through hundreds of WordPress slider plugins to see which one is the best? Well you’re in the right place. In this article, we will compare 5 of the top WordPress slider plugins based on their speed, ease of use, and overall features. The goal is to find which is the best WordPress slider plugin.

Many WPBeginner readers, quickly graduate the beginner level and step into theme customization. One of the most often asked questions by our readers is what is the best WordPress slider plugin? In this article, we will try to answer that question by comparing some of the best WordPress sliders for performance and quality.

The Problem With WordPress Sliders

Most WordPress sliders are slow. If it is not properly coded, a slider can significantly increase your page load time. If you do not have a good WordPress hosting service, your server may respond even slower than normal.

The other problem with WordPress slider plugins is ease of use. Most of them are bloated and come with a learning curve for beginners.

Last but not least, you want to make sure that your WordPress slider is responsive. A lot of them are not.

So how do you go through hundreds of sliders plugin and check for all of this? Well you don’t have to. We did the research for you and below are our results for the best WordPress slider.

The Contenders for Best WordPress Slider Plugin

For the sake of this article, we chose 5 of the top and highly recommended WordPress slider plugins. While doing our research, we noticed that these slider plugins were among the most used and recommended. We decided to run some simple tests and see how each one of them performs. The criteria we are looking for is speed, ease-of-use, features, and compatibility.

• Soliloquy
• Nivo Slider
• Meteor Slides
• Revolution Slider
• LayerSlider

Speed

Page load time and speed are an important factor to consider when adding a slider to your WordPress site. As mentioned earlier, not only a slow site affects user experience, but it also hurts your search engine rankings. This is why slider speed is our #1 priority during this test.

Slider Plugin	Page Load time	Requests	Page size
Soliloquy	1.34 secs	26	945 KB
Nivo Slider	2.12 secs	29	1 MB
Meteor	2.32 secs	27	1.2 MB
Revolution Slider	2.25 secs	29	1 MB
LayerSlider	2.12 secs	30	975 KB

As you can see in the above scores, Soliloquy was the fastest loading WordPress slider in our tests. The reason why it is the fastest loading slider is that the code is optimized for speed.

The plugin also uses a neat little trick. It loads your cover slide and then rest of the slides are loaded asynchronously. It is not just fast on tests, it feels fast to your visitors too.

If you want a high performance fast WordPress site, then Soliloquy is the best WordPress slider for you.

Ease of Use

Creating sliders is not as simple as we would like it to be. The goal here is to find a plugin that even beginner level users can use to create sliders both quickly and easily.

Soliloquy

We have worked on and tested many WordPress slider plugins, but so far we have found none as easy to use as Soliloquy. Installing it and creating a slider in it is extremely simple (see our guide on how to easily create a responsive WordPress slider with Soliloquy).

The reason why it’s easy to use is because it uses the WordPress coding guidelines and blends in with your native WordPress admin interface. Soliloquy has a simple but intuitive user interface to create slides using the default WordPress media uploader.

There are shortcodes, template tags, a button on post editor, and widget to add your slides to different sections of your website.

Nivo Slider

Creating a slider with Nivo Slider was easy and quite straight forward. You can choose the images from the media uploader, and upload multiple new images at once. You can also drag and rearrange slide order. Using the same media uploader interface, you can add captions, link, and alternate text to your slide images. It comes with shortcodes and template tags so you can add a slider to your posts, pages, and template files.

Nivo Slider does not support video and other multimedia type. Meaning this is limited to only image slideshows. It comes with a nice bundle of themes that you can use and lots of transition effects to choose from. Plugin settings, creating slideshows, and adding slides to posts/pages is all very straight forward and smooth. However, if you are counting on features and options, then Nivo falls behind Soliloquy.

Meteor Slides

When creating a slideshow with Meteor Slides you need to upload or select each slide individually. This is time consuming and many new users would probably find it confusing. After installing the plugin, go to Slides » Add New. Give this particular slide a title, and then click on set featured image to upload your slide.

If you want your slide to link to a page, then you can enter a URL. Lastly, you need to choose a Slideshow from Slideshows meta box.

You can not arrange the slide order in a slideshow. You can not add a video slide, or add text over your slide. This makes Meteor Slide very limited in functionality. However, it is useful if all you want to do is add a simple slideshow.

Revolution Slider

Creating a slider with Revolution Slider is not as straight forward because it separates the slider and slides creation process. When create a slider, you will see all the customization options such as resizing, thumbnails, animations, etc, but you will not see the ability to add slides which is confusing.

After creating your slider, you have to come back to the slider list in order to find a button to add your slides.

The user interface looks and feels different than rest of the WordPress UI. There are way too many options and the user interface does not help you easily locate the ones you need.

LayerSlider

LayerSlider is similar to the Revolution Slider because it has it’s own user interface which does not match rest of the WordPress UI. There are far too many customization options which can be good for some, but may complicate the creation process for beginners.

Creating your first slider with LayerSlider is not intuitive however there are helpful links to documentation that can help you get started.

Features

If all you want to do is create simple image slide shows, then Nivo Slider and Meteor Slides are both good enough to work with.

Soliloquy, Revolution Slider, and LayerSlider come with a lot more features. They are fully responsive and look equally beautiful on all devices and screen sizes. All three of them support video slides, HTML 5 videos, featured content slides, themes, animations and transitions.

Revolution Slider and Layer Slider both have their own user interface that may feel complicated to new users specially since these plugins bundle all the features in one.

On the other hand, Soliloquy offers a much easier and friendlier user interface to take advantage of all the features. Instead of packing everything in one plugin, Soliloquy uses addons for advanced features which allows you to install only what you need and keep your site bloat free.

Pricing

Another decisive factor that might help users choose a slider plugin for their site is pricing. Here is the price for a single site license of these plugins. Meteor Slider is a free plugin so it is not listed here:

Slider Plugin	Single Site License
Soliloquy	$19
Nivo Slider	$29
Revolution Slider	$18
LayerSlider	$17

After comparing these plugins we feel that the best WordPress slider plugin award goes to:

Soliloquy

Soliloquy is by far the fastest WordPress slider plugin in the market. It follows all of the coding best practices, it is very well documented, it is easy to extend for developers and even easier to use for users, and last but not least it is also the cheapest.

Use our Soliloquy Coupon to get an extra 25% off.

We hope this article answers the questions regarding the best WordPress slider plugin in terms of performance and quality. Which is your favorite WordPress slider plugin? Let us know by sending a tweet to @wpbeginner on Twitter.

To leave a comment please visit Which is the Best WordPress Slider? Performance + Quality Compared on WPBeginner.

The Ultimate List of Product Hunt Collections for Marketers

Say you want to get started on a new marketing strategy—collecting customer research, or creating cool images, or measuring ROI.

Where do you go first to find the tools that’ll make your job as smooth as can be?

I often turn to listicles and roundups that bundle together a big handful of helpful tools. And this is maybe why I love Product Hunt’s collections so much. Their collections are user-generated tools lists that are easy to browse and simple to find just the tools that I need.

I’m happy to share with you some of my favorite collections, and I went ahead and turned many of the most popular Buffer tools posts into collections also. Hopefully for any social media marketing strategy you’re keen to try next, there’ll be some useful ideas here in these collections!

What is Product Hunt?

Product Hunt is a website where new digital products and tools are discovered and upvoted by a community of folks like me and you.

What is a Product Hunt collection?

A Product Hunt collection is a bundle of tools that have been mentioned on Product Hunt, bundled by a common theme.

12 Helpful Buffer Tools Collections

1. Create Beautiful Images for Social Media (collection)

Visuals have been a key part to our marketing strategy both on the Buffer blog and on social media. We’ve seen great engagement with our image tweets and updates, and we’re grateful for some really cool tools that make image creation easy and seamless. Our favorites are included here in this collection.

Tools featured here:

• Coolors
• Pablo
• Infogram
• The Pattern Library
• The Noun Project
• Placeit
• UnSplash
• Icon Finder
• Aviary
• Canva
• Subtle Patterns
• Over
• CloudApp
• Recite
• Skitch

For even more image creation tools, see our original post on the Buffer blog: 23 Tools and Resources to Create Images for Social Media

2. The $0 marketing stack (collection)

Free marketing tools get me quite excited. I love the chance to explore and experiment with a free tool to see how it can help me save time or supercharge my marketing efforts. The list of tools in this collection all represent free alternatives to popular paid tools.

Tools featured here:

• Charlie
• Hotjar
• Medium
• Google Analytics
• Buffer
• Sidekick
• Peek
• Segment
• SumoMe
• Canva
• Wistia
• Simply Measured

For even more Twitter tools, see the original post on the Buffer blog: The $0 Marketing Stack: Free Options to Popular Paid Services and Tools

3. Where to Find Great Content to Share (collection)

Finding great content can be key to a social media strategy if you’re into sharing articles and videos relevant to your brand. We’ve found a few great ways to discover these shareable bits of content, many of which we’ve listed here in this collection.

Tools featured here:

• Panda
• Medium
• Sidebar
• Flipboard
• Growth Hackers
• Daily
• NYT Now
• Inbound.org
• Nuzzel
• MediaREDEF
• BuzzSumo
• Quibb
• Prismatic
• Contently
• The Latest
• NextDraft
• LinkedIn Pulse
• News.me

For even more Twitter tools, see the original post on the Buffer blog: Always Have an Amazing Link to Share: 25 Newsletters and Tools to Discover Shareable Content and 17 Unique Places to Find Great Content to Share

4. Twitter tools (collection)

We recently refreshed the Twitter tools post on the Buffer blog to include the new tools that have come up since we first published, nearly two years ago. The article mentions 90 tools now (90!), and I’ve added many of the top ones to the Product Hunt collection here.

Tools featured here:

• Pablo
• Spruce
• Twindr
• Stats for Twitter
• Buffer
• SocialRank
• Mention
• TUNS
• Daily 140
• Rite Tag
• Hash
• Riffle
• Share as Image
• Nuzzel
• SocialCount
• TweetDeck
• BuzzSumo
• Twitshot
• Filta
• Twitteriffic
• Followerwonk
• Beatstrap
• The Latest
• SumAll
• Klout
• Keyhole
• Twilert
• Tagboard
• Seen
• SocialBro
• Tweriod
• Twurly
• Warble

For even more Twitter tools, see the original post on the Buffer blog: The Big List of Twitter Tools: 91 Free Twitter Tools and Apps to Fit Any Need

5. Facebook tools (collection)

We’ve enjoyed coming across useful Facebook tools here and there—tools that show you benchmark stats for your page, tools that reveal info into your follower demographics, and more. It seems that Twitter tools are a bit more ubiquitous than Facebook, yet there’re still a number of great ones here that can help boost your Facebook marketing.

Tools featured here:

• ShortStack
• AdRoll
• Agora Pulse
• Facebook Page Barometer
• EdgeRank Checker

Tools featured here:

For even more Twitter tools, see the original post on the Buffer blog: How to Run a Facebook Contest, Analyze Your Page, and More: 11 Ideal Facebook Tools for Marketers

6. Social media analytics tools (collection)

Measuring the performance of your social media posts is a strategy that can look any number of different ways. Whether strictly ROI focused or more loosely into engagement and sentiment, you can find a tool to track just about any analytics taste. Here are a few that we’ve found to be quite useful.

Tools featured here:

• Riffle
• Google Analytics
• Iconosquare
• Followerwonk
• Cyfe
• SumAll
• Klout
• Keyhole

For even more Twitter tools, see the original post on the Buffer blog: Know What’s Working on Social Media: 19 Free Social Media Analytics Tools

7. Customer research tools (collection)

This collection of tools is one near and dear to my heart, as I really enjoy the chance to reach out directly to your audience and get their feedback. The tools mentioned here include survey tools, heat maps, user testing, and more.

Tools featured here:

• Typeform
• Heat-Map
• Survmetrics
• SurveyPal
• User Testing
• Click Insights
• Qualaroo
• Survata
• Usability Tools
• Temper

For even more Twitter tools, see the original post on the Buffer blog: Get to Know Your Audience: 18 Incredibly Useful Market Research Tools

8. Best Free Tools for Small Businesses (collection)

What makes for a small business tools? It’s likely that a lot of the small business tools mentioned here are also used by big businesses as well. What makes these particular useful for the small biz is that these tools are free and easy-to-use. You can get up and running with these tools in little time and for little money.

Tools featured here:

• Pocket
• Buffer
• SocialRank
• Mention
• Flare
• Twtrland
• IFTTT
• Nutshell
• Rapportive
• Canva
• Tweetdeck
• BuzzSumo
• Followerwonk
• Shared Count
• Keyhole
• News.me
• Rival IQ
• Tweet4me
• Social Bro
• Tweriod

For even more Twitter tools, see the original post on the Buffer blog: The Big List of The 61 Best Social Media Tools for Small Business

9. Browser extensions (collection)

Saving time online is a key focus for us here on the Buffer marketing team. And one way we go about doing that is with some high-powered browser extensions. These are a few that we find particularly useful.

Tools featured here:

• Giphy
• Rite Tag
• Riffle
• Social Analytics
• Pocket
• Feedly Mini
• Bit.ly
• Evernote Web Clipper
• Instagram for Chrome

For even more Twitter tools, see the original post on the Buffer blog: The 15 Best Browser Extensions to Improve Your Social Media Marketing

10. Mobile apps and tools (collection)

It’s amazing the work you can get done from your phone. This collection of mobile apps offers a little bit of everything for the on-the-go digital marketer.

Tools featured here:

• Trello
• Flipboard
• Overcast
• Buffer for iOS and Android
• Evernote
• MailChimp Snap
• Mention
• Asana
• IFTTT
• Daily
• Aviary
• Facebook Paper
• Hipchat
• Over
• Nimble
• Prismatic
• Flow

For even more Twitter tools, see the original post on the Buffer blog: 45 Best Mobile Apps and Tools for Marketers: How to Manage Social Media From Anywhere

11. Blogging tools (collection)

We’re grateful for the chance to experiment with a lot of different types of tools here on the Buffer blog. Several tools are included in our daily workflows of brainstorming, researching, note-taking, writing, editing, publishing, and sharing. Here’s a collection of our favorites.

Tools featured here:

• Trello
• Hemingway
• Wunderlist
• Evernote
• KeywordTool.io
• Quora
• Todoist
• Grammarly
• Canva
• Share As Image
• Death to the Stock Photo
• Blog Topic Generator
• Desk App
• BuzzSumo
• Toggl
• Digg Digg
• Filament
• Egg Timer
• Meme Generator

For even more Twitter tools, see the original post on the Buffer blog: 39 Blogging Tools to Help You Work Faster, Write Better, and Land More Readers

12. SEO tools (collection)

How much time do you spend on SEO for your website or blog? We spend a few minutes per blog post, and this time is well spent thanks to the SEO tools on hand. This collection mentions some real time savers, and they can be used whether you’re an SEO expert or not.

Tools featured here:

• Nibbler
• Keywordtool.io
• SimilarWeb
• MozBar
• Google Trends Visualizer
• ahrefs
• Check My Links

For even more Twitter tools, see the original post on the Buffer blog: 21 Simple and Free SEO Tools to Instantly Improve Your Marketing

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10 Useful Product Hunt Collections for Marketers

1. Free stuff for startups (collection)

A fun collection by Hiten Shah that covers 55+ free tools. It’s an incredibly exhaustive list, full of some of our favorite tools that we use every day here at Buffer, too.

2. 20 great podcasts for entrepreneurs (collection)

Not only a great list of podcasts for founders, but also a really useful list for anyone into learning about growing a business.

3. Personal assistant apps (collection)

Looking to offload some of your to-do list? These tools can help with a huge variety of items like research, scheduling, errands, and more.

4. Startup tool kit #4 (collection)

Each of Product Hunt’s Startup Tool Kit offerings has been really great (here’s a link to #1, #2, and #3), and for some reason #4 just really caught my eye. I’ve felt a yearning to try most every tool listed here, so maybe it’s a tug of wanderlust. You’ll note that these tool kits originally were intended as discounts or giveaways, and that some of the savings may have since expired.

5. Tools for marketers and growth hackers (collection)

This list of 34 tools covers a great range of marketing tasks, things like image creation, email newsletters, Twitter content, and more.

6. The 1,000 upvote club (collection)

Looking for the most popular Product Hunt products? They’re on this list, which collects only those products with 1,000 votes or more. Startup Stash holds the top spot with 3,000+ votes.

7. Newsletters you’ll love (collection)

Featuring 25 popular newsletters in the business and marketing scene, this collection makes it easy to find and discover a favorite new newsletter (or two).

8. To-do apps (collection)

For those looking to stay organized and on top of things, this collection has 27 ideas for new tools to try.

9. Tools for writers (collection)

This list of tools covers some really useful products that help with the writing process: word processors, ebook creators, dictionaries, and more.

10. Slack tools (collection)

If you use Slack to communicate with your team at work, there are some really neat integrations that can tie into your Slack rooms—things like brand monitoring, scheduling, live chat, and even Product Hunt notifications.

Bonus: Just for fun

Things for your desk (collection)

I don’t own anything from this list, but I’d love to! There’s stuff here like whiteboard laptop covers, mod notebooks, standing desks, and busy indicator lights.

Become a GIF master (collection)

Talk about an irresistible headline! I’d love to become a GIF master! There’re some really cool tools here like the Giphy Chrome extension and YouTube GIF Creator.

Over to you: What are your favorite products?

I’d be so excited to hear which products you most enjoy.

Which ones save you time?

Which ones do you use every day?

Feel free to leave any thoughts or tips here in the comments, and I’ll get right back to you!

Image sources: Pablo, Unsplash, IconFinder

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