Just a year ago WP Masters featured a review Using Carousels, Sliders, Slideshows to Manage UI Display Space which echoed the ideas found in ISitWP 2024 Slider review which confirmed the key role that slider and carousels were playing in WordPress Page Display. Now page designers can choose from a variety of layouts including justified grid, image accordions, and multioption carouseles. Reading the NYTimes and Washington Post readers are presented image, video, and stories in advanced accordion/carousel layout like so:
And WordPress end users have these same resources and many more UI tools available to in now12 high quality packages. Here is one from WPMet:
However, WordPress users are far from alone in the UI Websuite Builders sweepstakes with a pack of very large billion dollar vendors offering attractive UI tools.So this is the complication for not just slider users but all WordPress developers and user – there is a growing jungle of product choices available and scarce time and resources to make “good” let alone optimal choices on how to utilize “alluring UI tools from the Jungle in your business applications. And lurking in the wings are response time and security quagmires.
For even medium scale systems, this is the new reality in WordPress development. This review will try to uncover some rules of the Jungle road for slider/gallery/carousel usage with an eye toward broader Jungle Crossing tips.
Basic Rules of the Jungle Road
Here are basic steps that challenge users to obtain :
1 – Have a good reading of the immediate and long term payoffs of using advanced display widgets.
A – what measures are in place to get immediate & solid readings on costs vs returns for widget usage;
B – are these measurement made in a timely and consistent fashion;
2 -Obtain timely reviews of the state of the art tools – seeminly simple but fraught with sidetrack dangers
A – avoid the danger of continuing “hopefully this will work” assessments
B – be cautious of many vendors claims on their own “review websites”