Light Multilayer Slider

Light Multilayer Slider creates a native WordPress “Light Multilayer Slider” admin area where editors can build responsive touch sliders with image, video, embed/iframe, or HTML slides.

Current feature set:

• Touch and drag navigation.
• Animated layers for text, image, video, button, HTML, and hotspots.
• YouTube/Vimeo link embeds.
• Thumbnail and dot navigation.
• Sixteen photo transitions, including fade, slide, flow, zoom, flip, blur, wipes, reveal, curtain, and push.
• Ken Burns, soft parallax, and thirty-five image reveal effects for image slides and image layers.
• Five presentation modes: Banner Rotator, Thumbnails Banner, Playlist Banner, Content Slider, and Carousel.
• Three visual skins.
• Multi-item carousel controls with configurable visible items and spacing.
• Loop, random order, responsive/fixed width, animation timing, and easing controls.
• Whole-slide links with same-window or new-window targets.
• Circular autoplay timer with configurable color, size, and opacity.
• Playlist width/border controls and optional thumbnail reflection.
• Five content layouts with advanced layer positioning.
• Per-slide overlay color and opacity.
• Styled badge layers and filled or ghost CTA buttons.
• Optional drag/swipe navigation with inside or outside arrows.
• Separate custom image uploads for Previous and Next navigation buttons.
• Configurable arrow and pagination colors.
• Bullets, strokes, numbers, or thumbnail pagination with alignment and placement controls.
• Next-slide preview and linear autoplay progress bar.
• Slide-change and CTA-click analytics events with optional Google dataLayer integration.
• Native HTML5 fullscreen mode.
• Optional keyboard navigation and slide permalinks through URL hashes.
• Smart autoplay that can permanently stop after the first user action.
• Nearby media hydration and optional distant-slide DOM release.
• Horizontal or vertical draggable thumbnail strips and custom HTML tabs.
• Bulk image selection from the WordPress media manager.
• Drag-and-drop slide reordering with keyboard-accessible move controls.
• Per-image alt text and responsive WordPress image markup for SEO.
• Separate image title metadata, crop position, fit-inside, and smart-pad controls.
• Gallery width, minimum width, maximum width, spacing, and background controls.
• Distraction-free fullscreen editing and a persistent dark editor mode.
• Live slider preview in the editor.
• Add to Page and Copy Shortcode actions.
• JSON slider import and export.
• Undo/redo history, keyboard hotkeys, slide duplication, and layer copy/paste/duplication.
• YouTube, Vimeo, TikTok, local, and external video slides.
• Video poster, autoplay, mute, loop, controls, and WebVTT caption settings.
• Automatic video pause when a visitor leaves a slide.
• Dynamic post, page, product, event, or custom-post-type feeds using featured images.
• Date, time, and weekday visibility scheduling.
• Custom mobile/tablet breakpoints and per-layer device visibility.
• Native accessible image lightbox.
• High-priority loading for the active image.
• Hardened JSON imports, iframe allowlisting, bounded slide/layer payloads, primary-pointer checks, single-slide touch protection, and duplicate-submit prevention.
• Collapsible slide and layer cards with expand/collapse-all controls.
• Context-aware fields that show only options relevant to the selected slide or layer type.
• Guided help copy, streamlined settings, polished editor controls, and a mixed-content demo slide.
• Nineteen built-in skins, including Bold Controls, Clean Controls, Bare Minimal, Rounded Controls, and Square Controls.
• Independent collapsible Slider Settings sections for General, Content, Navigation, Motion, Style, Performance, and Schedule.
• Native WordPress WYSIWYG editors for HTML slides and HTML layers.
• Full-slider accessible lightbox presentation and standalone landing-page URLs.
• One-click control presets for Thumbs, Navigation, Dots, Dot Previews, Numbers, Progress Bar, and Focus.
• WordPress widget and xslider_render() PHP template function.
• Optional [gallery] shortcode override using a Light Multilayer Slider as its display template.
• Cached slider data with automatic invalidation after edits.
• Developer filters: xslider_slides and xslider_settings.
• HTML slide variables for common title, description, image, thumbnail, and link values.
• Shortcode and Gutenberg block placement.
• User profile tag targeting.
• Accessible carousel semantics, live slide status, inactive-slide focus management, visible focus styles, reduced-motion handling, and autoplay pause/start controls.

Core shortcodes:

• [xslider id=”123″] renders a specific published slider.
• [xslider] renders the first published slider that matches the current user’s Light Multilayer Slider profile tags.
• [xslider tags=”vip,summer”] limits automatic selection to those slider tags.
• [xslider_section] is an alias for section/page-builder contexts.

Block editor:

• Add the Light Multilayer Slider block from the Widgets category.
• Enter a Slider ID for a specific slider, or leave it blank to use profile tag matching.

PHP:

• echo xslider_render(123);

External gallery integrations:

• Plugins can inject slides using the xslider_slides filter.
• This provides an adapter point for NextGEN, Flickr, DAM, or custom media providers without requiring those services in Light Multilayer Slider core.

Targeting model:

1. Add Slider Tags to each Light Multilayer Slider.
2. Edit a WordPress user profile and add matching Light Multilayer Slider User Tags.
3. A slider with no Slider Tags is public.
4. A tagged slider renders only when at least one slider tag matches the logged-in user’s profile tags.

External services

External video services are optional. They are contacted only when an editor adds their content and a browser loads the embed, including in an editor preview. Embeds may load before a visitor clicks play; lazy loading and nearby-slide preloading affect when requests occur. This plugin does not provide a visitor consent banner or block embeds until consent.

YouTube (Google)

Displays videos selected by an editor using youtube.com, youtu.be, or youtube-nocookie.com links or allowed iframe markup. When the player loads, the browser sends the video identifier, IP address, browser/device information, and potentially the referring page URL and provider cookies to Google. Playback interactions are handled by the embedded player. No WordPress profile tags are sent by the plugin.
Terms: https://www.youtube.com/t/terms
Privacy: https://policies.google.com/privacy

Vimeo

Displays videos selected by an editor through the player.vimeo.com player. When an embed loads, the browser sends the video identifier, IP address, browser/device information, and potentially the referring page URL and provider cookies to Vimeo. Playback interactions are handled by the embedded player.
Terms: https://vimeo.com/legal
Privacy: https://vimeo.com/legal/privacy

TikTok

Displays TikTok videos selected by an editor using the tiktok.com/player/v1/ embedded player. When an embed loads, the browser sends the video identifier, IP address, browser/device information, and potentially the referring page URL and provider cookies to TikTok. Playback interactions are handled by the embedded player.
Terms: https://www.tiktok.com/legal/page/row/terms-of-service/en
Privacy: https://www.tiktok.com/legal/page/row/privacy-policy/en

Freemius

The bundled Freemius SDK provides account connection, licensing, paid-plan checkout, and optional usage reporting. When an administrator opts in to account connection or activates a license, it can send the administrator’s name and email, site URL, plugin/PHP/WordPress versions, locale, and license/account identifiers to api.freemius.com. Connected installations can periodically synchronize license and installation status; optional diagnostics depend on the permissions selected in the SDK’s connection screen. Opening account or checkout screens also contacts Freemius and its payment providers. The core slider features do not require opting in to usage reporting.
Terms: https://freemius.com/terms/
Privacy: https://freemius.com/privacy/

Editor-selected external media and analytics

Editors may enter externally hosted image, video, poster, or caption URLs. Loading that content sends a request to the chosen host, including the requested resource, the visitor’s IP address and browser information, and potentially referrer information and cookies. There is no default external media host; its terms and privacy policy depend on the URL selected by the site owner. Use the WordPress Media Library for locally hosted media.

Slider interaction events are dispatched locally in the browser. If the site already defines a dataLayer array, the plugin also pushes slider events into it. The plugin does not load Google Analytics or Google Tag Manager itself; any transmission by the site’s separately configured analytics is controlled by that integration.

Roadmap

• Slider picker dropdown inside the Gutenberg block.
• More sample slider templates inspired by common hero, gallery, video, post, and product slider patterns.
• Template library and visual theme editor.
• Analytics events for impressions and slide interactions.
• Dynamic sources for posts, WooCommerce products, RSS, and ACF fields.
• Advanced responsive controls per slide.
• Role and membership plugin integrations.