Revolution Slider Review

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Today we review the Revolution Slider from ThemePunch, one of the easiest slider plugins to use. And true to its creators' name, it really packs a punch!
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Sliders continue to dominate as one of the most requested features in WordPress websites, so it’s no surprise that there are a good number of slider plugins available. We’ve already reviewed others in the past, but today it’s the turn of Revolution Slider.

Revolution Slider is a product from ThemePunch, an established theme and plugin development company. It was first released in July 2012, and has received numerous updates since then, a sure sign that the developers are doing their best to improve the product in response to user needs.

The plugin has been downloaded more than 6,800 times from CodeCanyon, and enjoys a 4.71 star rating (out of 5), clearly people are very happy with Revolution Slider.

Features

revolution slider

Slider Revolution is a fully developed slide displaying system offering the capability to show images, videos and captions paired with simple, modern and fancy 3D transitions. On top of that, Slider Revolution is fully responsive and mobile optimized and can take on any dimensions.

Here’s the full feature set taken from the plugin’s description on CodeCanyon:

  • Image and Thumbs fully resizable
  • Using CSS Animation with FallBack to jQuery
  • Unlimited Caption Layers
  • Captions like Video, Image and html tags can be easily created
  • Unlimited Slides
  • iPhone & Android Swipe Touch enabled
  • jQuery Conflict free plugin
  • Customizable 100% via Plugin Backend
  • Easy installation in your Website
  • Special Easing
  • Vimeo & Youtube Supported
  • Full Screen Video with Autoplay function
  • Stop AutoPlay during Video Playback
  • Duplicate, Slider, slide, captions Function
  • Drag and Drop Captions in the Editor
  • Fullwidth, Responsive (8 Level) and Normal Modes
  • Optional Shadows included
  • Hide Captions Separetely or Together depending on Slider Width
  • Hide whole Slider Depending on Screen Width
  • Countless Art of Transitions
  • 10 Different Caption Animation Types
  • 20 Different Slide Transition, and Unlimited Variations due to Rotation and Amount of Slots
  • Two Level Animations of Captions. Start Time, End time, Different Animation Type and Easing at Start and End
  • Public Api, like stop & start, next,prev, jump to slide. Events at video play, start and stop, events at slide change..

Usage

Once you’ve installed and activated Revolution Slider, you’ll see a new menu item in your dashboard, of course named ‘Revolution Slider’. Clicking on it takes you to the only interface you get to use for creating and editing sliders with this plugin. Unlike other plugins which also use submenu items for things like configuration and import/export, with Revolution Slider everything is bundled onto one screen.

That’s not to say that the screen is cluttered, since things are shown or hidden depending on circumstances via jQuery. However I think I slightly prefer the interfaces of Soliloquy and Easing Slider which are closer to native WordPress. That’s just a personal preference however, and doesn’t detract from the merits of Revolution Slider.

Revolution slider main screen
Revolution slider main screen

From the main screen we can now create a new slider, edit slides of an existing slider, delete a slider or even duplicate it. There’s also a reminder of the shortcode and a handy preview button, which opens a popup showing a demo of the slider with the applied settings.

Lets take a look at the Slider edit screen, we have lots of customisation options here, and they’re all easily accessible. Further detail sections are revealed via jQuery drop downs, keeping screen clutter to the minimum.

Editing a slider
Editing a slider

If we take a look at editing individual slides, we’ll get the screen below. As you can see, it is again very easy to modify all the settings pertaining to each slider. Perhaps, what I like most here is the easy with which I can add layers on top of a slide. It’s a real cinch to add text, image or even video layers.

When adding text layers, you even get a number of predefined styles, plus the ability to edit those styles. The interface for adding layers is the best I’ve seen within slider plugins lately. Check out this example of layering with Revolution Slider, truly amazing stuff, and its so easy to create such layering effects with the interface provided by Revolution Slider. What I would add is the ability to resize image and video layers when overlaying them on the slide.

Editing an individual slide
Editing an individual slide

Once we’ve crafted our perfect slider, it’s very easy to insert it into our website, and there are three methods of doing this:

  • Direct insertion into theme<?php putRevSlider( "alias" ) ?> example: <?php putRevSlider("slider1") ?>
    For showing only on homepage use: <?php putRevSlider("slider1","homepage") ?>
    For showing on certain pages use: <?php putRevSlider("slider1","2,10") ?>
  • From the widgets panel drag the “Revolution Slider” widget to the desired sidebar
  • From the post editor insert the shortcode from the sliders table

It’s important to mention that the slider is fully responsive so it will work fine on mobile devices. You can also have multiple videos on one slide, or have a whole slider being a video.

If you’d like to have something to start out from as a base, check out the fantastic examples on the Themepunch website, you can download them and then import them via the Revolution Slider plugin.

Here’s a video I recorded for you guys. In this video I go over basic usage of the plugin and also show you some cool demos of what the plugin can do.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0Rrln-Hv2E[/youtube]

Pricing

Revolution Slider can be bought from CodeCanyon for only $15 (regular licence). The extended licence will set you back $75. Most users will only need the regular licence, so $15 ia a very fair price to pay for this slider.

No complaints from my end with regards to pricing, this plugin is a steal at $15.

Documentation & Support

ThemePunch use Ticksy as a support system, so they’ve got you covered if you need any help with Revolution Slider. Their documentation, which comes packaged as an HTML file within the downloaded plugin, is excellent and gives you all the information you need to start creating sliders and display them within your theme.

Moreover, there are a number of videos on YouTube such as this one, and this other one showing usage of the plugin, so you’re really spoilt when it comes to guides and documentation for this plugin.

Conclusion

Overall Revolution Slider is definitely one of the best WordPress slider plugins, together with the likes of SoliloquyRoyalSlider, and Easing Slider.

It’s interesting to note that Revolution Slider is used on many other themes, among them some of the top sellers on Themeforest, such as InovadoU-Design and Avada. It might well be the most popular slider plugin within other themes for sale.

I thoroughly enjoyed testing and using this plugin, and highly recommend it to all those of you who are looking for a slider plugin, especially if you plan to include some layer-based animation features to your slides.

Get Revolution Slider

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Jean Galea

Jean Galea is an investor, entrepreneur, and blogger. He is the founder of WP Mayor, the plugins WP RSS Aggregator and Spotlight, as well as the Mastermind.fm podcast. His personal blog can be found at jeangalea.com.

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11 Responses

  1. I have used this slider many times but the new version does not work and there is no support.

    Too many bugs.

    Save your money but what’s more important your time.

    I read every post on the Internet over the last 3 days and hundreds of developers are having the same problems.

    It will not display all the slides unless they are in the wrong order and even that is intermittent.

    The loop function does not work at all.

    I tried to join the their forum but it says my credentials are wrong. I’ve asked for help with this also but no help was provided.

    There is just no customer support at all.

  2. I have lost 8 sites thanks to this slider. It was good, easy to use and full of security holes. Never again.

    1. Hi Alex, did you get in touch with the team at Revolution Slider about this? What did they have to say about it?

  3. Slider Revolution is second to None. It’s gorgeous, and well designed. The latest update, 5.0, really does make it easier to design and edit slides. The interface is much improved, and really makes an “amateur” website look professional.

  4. Don’t want to appear dumb here, but is there a version of Slider Revolution that allows me to use an interface like WOWSlider does? And where it creates the HTML and other elements I need automatically? It looks like I have to code everything here, Am I right?

    Help appreciated!

    Mark

  5. Hi there.
    I bought the slider today, but the slider shows as a grey block, no slider / no errors, nothing. I am using the Pagelines framework and there doesn’t seem to be any real documentation on this issue and how to fix it.

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