20 Best Free And Premium WordPress Slider Plugins

Today I want to list some of the best slider plugins for Wordpress blogs.Most Bloggers want to use a slider be it a Featured posts slider or just a neat slideshow of your pictures or Carousel.Originally I wanted to list 20 free slider plugins but to be honest there was not 20 Good free sliders to choose from.Most of the free sliders were just a Lite Version of a premium plugin.So I found 10 top free slider plugins and I have also listed 10 of the very best Premium Wordpress Plugins if you are willing to spend a few bucks.

So I will start with the 10 best free slideshow plugins and then I have listed the 10 premium slideshow plugins.

Best Free WordPress Slider Plugins

Embed Google Maps Get Directions Form To Your Blog

While working on a blog recently the client who used the blog to promote their business wanted to provide the address of the business on the blog.As I would always try to do I went one better, so as well as just provide the address I embedded a form for people to get directions via Google Maps.The Google Maps form is easy to add to your blog and you simply add your business address to the code then visitors to the blog can then enter their address and generate the directions.Once generated the map will show a route with options for driving and Public transport if available.

OK so lets try it out.

Below I have embedded the form with the White House as the address you will get directions for (Works in all country's), you will change this to your business address (BTW I keep saying business address as I don't recommend giving directions to your home online).

Address : 1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Washington, DC 20500, United States

Get Directions :

Enter your starting address:

Embed Google Maps Get Directions Form On Your Blog

How To Add Google Analytics To Blogger

Google Analytics is the most popular and in-dept service for tracking your blogs stats.Google Analytics is available for all blog platforms and websites but as it is a Google service like Blogger it's extra easy for Blogger users.In fact Analytics is built into all Blogger blogs you just need to add your Analytics Web Property ID via the blogs settings.

In this post I will show you how to set up your analytics account and connect it to your blog.

Finding Your Property ID

Allow Mobile Touch Screen Pinch To Zoom On Your Blogger Blog

I had just finished a design job on a Blogger blog when we came across a problem I had not encountered before.While checking how the blog looked on mobile devices such as the iPad, I found I could not use Pinch To Zoom.I'm sure you will all have used some form of a touch screen mobile device with pinch to zoom so now how important it is.

I had believed all sites automatically allowed pinch to zoom on mobile so I needed to find a way to fix the problem.

The solution I came up with was a meta tag I could add to the template that would :

1. First Set the blogs default size on Mobile devices : initial-scale=1.0

2. Second specify that Mobile users could zoom : user-scalable=yes'

3. Third set the minimum and maximum scale : maximum-scale=12.0, minimum-scale=.25,

With this meta tag added to the blog we then had no problem using pinch to zoom on the iPad and Android tablets.With such a high percentage of Internet users using mobile devices I would recommend checking your blog has pinch to zoom enabled.If not here is how you can add our meta tag.

Allow Pinch To Zoom On Your Blog

Surprising Blogging Advice No One Ever Tells You

Guest Post - Our host is Kim Yuhl, Kim uses her experience as a blogger to share some fresh blogging advice.See How To Become a guest author on Spice Up Your Blog.

When I first started blogging, I thought to myself "if she can do it then so can I" with every blog that I read. And then one day I decided to do just that. Now keep in mind at the time, I didn't like writing much, I was a pretty private person and I hate asking for the sale or doing anything that seems overly self-promotional. Oh, how a few years will change you.

Now, writing is my saving grace, I am beyond an open book and I promote the heck out of me, my products and services and anything I believe in. I'm still an introvert at heart but I definitely have extroverted qualities that allow me to exist in the blogging world.

With all that said, I wish someone had lowered my expectations about what it meant to be a blogger because it is so much more than writing a few posts each week. Here is what I wish I had known from the start.

Automatically Post Your YouTube Videos On Wordpress And Blogger

I know many bloggers have YouTube channels and like to post their YouTube videos on their blog.So in this post I will show you how can automatically post YouTube videos on your blog.Using IFTTT I have created two recipes to do just that, auto post any video you upload to YouTube to your blog on either Blogger or Wordpress.As well as this the Video title from YouTube will be used as the post title and the video description will be used as text within the post.

So; IFTTT is a site you can use to connect social accounts, online services, feeds, email and more.When we connect two of these services it is called a "recipe".I created a recipe wherein you can connect your YouTube account with your Wordpress blog and another were you can connect your YouTube account with your Blogger blog.I have tested both and once connected YouTube uploads are posted on your blog within minutes.I then made these recipes public so anyone can use them.

I have a video tutorial below along with links to both recipes for you to connect your blogs with your YouTube channel.

Video Tutorial

Top 20 Best Premium Blogger Templates

We have created some fantastic lists of Free Blogger Templates, indeed they are some of the most viewed posts on the entire site.But what about Premium Blogger Templates, templates that require a fee ? For a long time I never even considered listing a collection of Premium Blogger templates.There was for the last few years Premium templates out there but in my opinion they did not offer enough more quality than free templates to warrant a fee.

But all that has changed, over the last year I have seen a number of designers selling premium templates that really are a cut above the rest.Yes the free templates are still good and some extremely good but many of the premium templates now being released have the extra quality and features that are worth a the lousy few bucks they charge (No template listed below costs more than $20).

I have actually worked with a few of these templates and it was while working with the first on the list I finally decided to bite the bullet and do the list.So here it is I have linked to the demo's and you can click on Full Details to get all the info on each template.

20 Best Premium Blogger Templates

Masala

Price $20
Masala is a template I have worked with and It's excellent.A bright fresh color scheme with a two column right sidebar layout.The template comes in two styles as you will see in the demo page, both a post list and portfolio style.In the sidebar is social icons with follow counters.A top menu, footer columns, author section and related posts are among the other features.

Demo      Full Details

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How To Automatically Hide Spam Links In Blogger Comments

Comment spam is a major issue for all bloggers.We all love comments and they can be the life blood of a blog but spam can be hard to control.Even comments that look OK can contain spam links, especially on Blogger were when moderating comments you can not see if any of the text is a link.So in this post I have two ways to ensure your the comments on your blog will not contain spam links.Not only will it remove the links from any future comments but it will also remove all links from past comments.

We have two options :

CSS - First a small piece of CSS that will completely remove links left in comments.With the CSS the anchor text that make the link (the clickable words) will be completely removed the rest of the comment will remain.

jQuery - Second we have a small piece of jQuery script that will leave the anchor text that make the link (the clickable words) but they will no longer be a link or clickable.

Cool Ehh ? I had used the CSS for some time (Yes spammers ye have been wasting your time) but have now switched to the jQuery.Check out the video tutorial to see more on how each works then It's your choice on how you want to go.The codes needed are below the video.

How To Embed Instagram Photos On Your Blog

Instagram has grown beyond recognition since it's launch in 2010 as a photo sharing social network.But what can Bloggers get from Instagram ?

In this post I want to show you how you can easily embed photos from instagram in your blog posts.This is of course a great way to share your Instagram images on your blog but Instagram also has great potential as an image source in general.We all know pictures bring blog posts to life but often we struggle to find suitable free images to use in our posts.With the Instagram embed option you can get great free to use photos while knowing you are linking back to the owner of the photo in the proper manner.

Here is an example of a photo I have embedded from Instagram.You can see the image is in a frame that links to the photographer on Instagram and shows the likes and comments so you need not worry about copyright.The images can also be resized to suit, in the embed code you will see and edit the height and width (This one is 710x612 Pixels).

How To Stop Sites From Opening Your Blog In A Frame

OK this is another post that comes from a readers question.They said "I use Networked Blogs to auto share my posts on Facebook but when you click the link on Facebook it shows the page with a bar at the top and a different URL".

This is in fact called a frame and some websites display pages from other sites within a frame, Stumble Upon would be a good example as indeed is Networked Blogs.While I feel Stumble Upon has a reason for this many websites do it to keep people on their site, some even take credit for your content.

Example

In the first image you see how the blog usually looks :

Here we see the blog within the Networked Blogs frame.In the address bar you can see the URL is Networked Blogs (In Green) and a bar runs across the top of the page (In Red) :

We can fix this and add a line of script to your template that detects when your blog is being placed in a frame and overrides the frame.This tutorial is for Blogger Blogs but the code will work on any site.

Stop Your Blog Opening In A Frame