The MH Slider widget can be used to display several slides on your front page / homepage to feature your content. The slider comes with some nice features and options to present your content in an attractive manner. In case you are experiencing any issues with the MH Slider widget, we have collected solutions for the most common issues with the MH Slider widget.
- Difference between MH Slider and MH Custom Slider
- How to place the MH Slider widget on your website
- Where to place the MH Slider widget on your website
- How to change the layout of the MH Slider widget
- MH Slider widget does not appear on front page
- MH Slider widget is displaying inconsistent image sizes
- Recommended image dimensions for the MH Slider widget
- MH Slider does not display images but grey placeholders
- MH Slider widget is loading very slowly
- How to change the size of the MH Slider widget
- How to change the excerpt length within the MH Slider widget
- How to change font size within MH Slider widget
- How to increase / decrease MH Slider speed
- How many slides can be displayed in the MH Slider widget
- How to make the MH Slider widget static
- Slider suddenly stops appearing on your site
- You have not found a solution to your issue?
What is the difference between MH Slider and MH Custom Slider?
The MH Slider widget automatically displays your posts according to your chosen categories or tags and you can sort the posts by date, popularity (based on number of comments) or display random posts. The MH Custom Slider on the other hand can be used to manually insert content by entering a custom image URL, title and custom excerpt text. The MH Custom Slider allows you to display up to five custom slides, while the MH Slider widget can display up to 50 posts.
How to place the MH Slider widget on your website
Navigate to Appearance => Widgets in your WordPress dashboard and place the MH Slider widget in your preferred widget location. While the MH Slider widget is optimized to be used within the large widget locations on your front page, it can be used in other widget locations as well. In order to display the MH Slider widget on your front page, you need to ensure that you have created a static front page properly and have selected the Homepage template for your static front page. When no other options are set, the MH Slider widget will automatically display your latest published articles.
Where to place the MH Slider widget on your website
The MH Slider widget is supposed and optimized to be placed within a suitable widget area on your front page (e.g. Home 1 or Home 2 – depending on your theme) and there it works flawlessly. If you place the MH Slider widget within a full-width widget area (e.g. Home 1 – depending on your theme), please ensure to enable the large image size for your slider, otherwise you might experience blank space next to the slider because the smaller image just is too small for a full-width widget area.
How to change the layout of the MH Slider widget
If you want to change the appearance of the MH Slider widget, this in general would require custom coding. If you’re familiar with coding, you could use tools like for example Firebug to inspect the elements of the MH Slider widget and then customize the CSS code as you like.
Our popular MH Magazine theme also comes with some layout options for the MH Slider widget which allow you to select different layouts to choose your prefered style for the MH Slider widget. You can select your preferred slider layout within MH Magazine when you navigate to Appearance => Widgets in your WordPress dashboard and change the layout within the MH Slider widget options.
MH Slider widget does not appear on front page
In case your MH Slider widget does not appear on your front page, it is very likely that you have not set your static front page correctly. Please follow the tutorial on how to set a static front page in WordPress and please ensure that you’ve set the Homepage template for your static front page and that you’ve placed and saved the MH Slider widget in your WordPress dashboard. If your site is cached somehow, e.g. in case you’re using a caching plugin or caching by your host, please also ensure that you’ve cleared your browser cache and have reloaded the site in your browser.
MH Slider widget is displaying inconsistent image sizes
If you notice an inconsistency in image sizes within your MH Slider widget (e.g. if your slider changes the size when moving through the slides), you will need to regenerate your thumbnails AND make sure you have uploaded featured images with proper image size that at least meet the minimum requirements for the slider image as stated in the documentation of your theme.
What are the recommended image dimensions for the MH Slider widget?
In order for your slider images to be consistent in size, you need to upload images with proper size that at least meet the minimum requirements for the images in the slider of your theme. To find out about the required image dimensions of the theme you are using, please have a look at the documentation of your theme. In case the images within the MH Slider widget on your site are not consistent in size and your slider is resizing in an ugly way, please see this tutorial: How to fix issues with changing images sizes in slider.
MH Slider widget does not display images but grey placeholders
In case you’ve not uploaded featured images for your posts, the MH Slider widget will display image placeholders to ensure that the slider won’t collapse if there isn’t an image assigned to your posts. Nowadays WordPress themes usually make use of featured images for thumbnails within widgets and on archives. That means you will have to add featured images to your posts and the images will automatically be used as thumbnails where necessary. If you don’t know how to set featured images in WordPress, please read this tutorial: How to use featured images in WordPress.
MH Slider widget is loading very slowly
Most people are using large image sliders on their site and the images that are being displayed usually are quite large as well, that means based on the bandwidth it may take some time until all images are loaded. To ensure that there are no displaying issues during that loading process, the MH Slider widget will load right away, after the rest of your site has been loaded properly – which usually happens very quickly (see theme demos).
If you experience that the slider takes very long until it appears on your site, then this usually means that your website itself is loading slowly and that is what is blocking the slider from showing up. To fix this, please have a look at your plugins and disable plugins that slow-down your site and you can also improve the performance of your site by enabling caching and minification. Here you can find more information: How to optimize the performance of your WordPress site.
How to change the size of the MH Slider widget
In general the size of the MH Slider widget will automatically adapt based on the size of the widget area in which you place the widget. However, some of our WordPress themes (e.g. MH Magazine) have an option where you can change the image size of the slider. This option basically is to ensure that the slider doesn’t need to load large images in case you place the widget into a widget area that doesn’t require such large images.
To change the size of the images within the MH Slider widget, please navigate to Appearance => Widgtes in your WordPress dashboard and make use of the particular option within the widget. If you’ve placed the MH Slider widget into a full-width widget area (e.g. Home 1 – depending on your theme), please ensure that you’ve enabled large images for the slider, otherwise there will be a blank space next to the slider because the small image size is too small for a full-width widget area.
How to change the excerpt length within the MH Slider widget
Some of our WordPress themes (e.g. MH Magazine) provide an option to change the excerpt length in words within the options panel of the MH Slider widget. To change the excerpt length within the slider, please navigate to Appearance => Widgets in your WordPress dashboard and modify the excerpt length by using the particular option of the MH Slider widget as you like.
In case your theme doesn’t provide such an option for the MH Slider widget, you usually should be able to change the global excerpt length for your theme in your WordPress dashboard under Appearance => Customize => Theme Options => General.
How to change font size within MH Slider widget
You can change the font size within the caption of the MH Slider widget via CSS code. To show you how this could be achieved, we’ve prepared an example for our popular MH Magazine theme which you can find here: Change font size within caption of MH Slider widget.
How to increase / decrease slider speed
When using WordPress themes by MH Themes, the jQuery code which handles the behavior and functionality of the MH Slider widget can usually be found within the theme file /js/scripts.js and often looks quite similar to this:
jQuery(".mh-slider-widget").flexslider({ animation: "slide", slideshowSpeed: 5000, controlNav: true, directionNav: false, smoothHeight: true });
If you’re familiar with coding, feel free to create a custom child theme or a plugin and add your custom code as you like. If you would like to change the speed of the slider, you could for example modify this value (ms) to meet your personal requirements:
slideshowSpeed: 5000
You can find additional information about the available properties for the FlexSlider script and more examples on this page: FlexSlider Properties.
How many slides can be displayed in the MH Slider widget
The MH Slider widget can display up to 50 posts / slides, yet some slider layouts of the MH Slider widget in our popular MH Magazine theme are designed to display up to 5 slides due to design limitations of the slider navigation. In general displaying up to 5 slides is recommended to not overwhelm your visitors, but that decision of course is up to you. In comparison to the MH Slider widget, the MH Custom Slider widget is limited to 5 slides out of the box.
How to make the MH Slider widget static
In case you want to display a static image / slide on your front page, you can achieve this by limiting the number of posts in the MH Slider widget to only one post. As a result the slider will stop sliding through the posts and display one post as static content – of course based on the criteries you’ve chosen to filter the posts (categories / tags). You can change the number of posts that are being shown within the slider in your WordPress dashboard under Appearance => Widgets and then simply make use of the particular option within the options panel of the MH Slider widget.
Slider suddenly stops appearing on your site
If the MH Slider widget suddenly stops working or has disappeared, it’s very likely that you’ve installed a plugin which is causing your issue. It’s also possible that one of your previously installed plugins has been updated and now is blocking the slider (plugin updates might happen automatically as well). What you should do is disable your plugins one by one to find the plugin that is causing your issue and then simply remove or replace the plugin.
If disabling plugins doesn’t help to solve your issue, please also check if the MH Slider widget is properly placed in the particular widget area and saved within your WordPress dashboard under Appearance => Widgets. You also might want to check if your static front page still is configured correctly: How to set a Static Front Page in WordPress.
You have not found a solution to your issue?
In case you have not found answers to your questions in this support article, please also take a look at our other support topics, as it is very likely that you will find your answer there. If you have purchased WordPress themes by MH Themes and own a valid license to gain access to theme updates and support, then you may also send a support request for additional assistance.