Slide generator feature added to SmartSlider

We got a lot of requests, that how to insert articles, other content elements to the sliders, how to make product slideshows from the selected Virtuemart category, or simply how to make slides interactive, and so on... Now your dreams come true, because we released a new version with a new built-in feature called Slide Generator.

What can I use it for?

With this feature you can automatically create slides, for example from:

The latest articles

Articles from a selected category

Virtuemart products from selected categories ( Virtuemart 1.1.x and 2.x.x are also supported )

Image slideshows

• From any folder
• From Phocagallery category
• From Ignite gallery category

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Inserted in the Slider Manager

You can find the Slide Generator built-in to the Slider Manager, because we thought that this feature will be frequently used, when you create new sliders. However it is situated separetely from the other settings, so it won't be uncomfortable for users, who will update. If you would like to create slider with the ordinary method you don't have to pay attention for the Slide Generator. Below you can see an image from the new part of the Slider Manager.

Structure of the Slide Generator

As you can see, the Slide Generator contains three main parts:

Generator type and specific options

Here you can select the type of the generator, number of how many slides do you want, which category do you want to show, etc..

Content parameters

This part also can be familiar from the slide manager. Here you can define what the content part of the slides contains in each positions.

Caption parameters

Here you can set the caption of the slides. All of the types and attributes can set as in the Slide Manager.

Advantages

Slide generator has two huge advatages:

• If you generated your slider with it, your slides will be fully interactive, so for example you generate a latest articles type, and you made some modification in one article. After that you will see the articles always in their current saved state in your slider. It uses SmartInsert feature, which you can learn more here.
• The second advantage is, that you can select whether you want the generated slides physically, or not. It means that SmartSlider now capable to make slides when somebody reach your front-end. However this function can be an advantage, it needs more resource, so you can select that the generator make slides after saving the slider, and with this method you can edit each of them on the Slide Manager.

One more feature added!

We proudly present one more new feature, which can make your websites more faster.
This is the slider caching function, what means that you can set wether your slider cachable or not. If you set yes, your slider will loaded more faster like the Road Runner. You can also set the expiration time in minutes. It means that the slider will re-cache the content after the interval expired.
You can find these settings also in Slider Manager.

Future plans

In the future we would like to extend this feature with more component support.
There will be a very detailed tutorial for these new features, where we present the Slide Generator and the caching functions during working.