A module for the Orchard CMS that allows editors to easily add slideshows to their sites. Each slide is a layout, allowing complete visual control and content flexibility, and can be added either statically or dynamically based on projections and lists. Out of the box, slideshows can be rendered using either Bootstrap Carousel, Cycle2 or jCarousel. Developers can easily extend this list by writing their own plugins using an easy-to-use API.
A slideshow is a type of graphical element on a website, which transitions between multiple slides or "pages" of content, typically images overlaid with descriptive text. With IDeliverable.Slides however, a slideshow can be a lot more powerful than just a bunch of images; slides are actually based on the built-in Orchard.Layouts functionality (a new feature introduced in Orchard 1.9) which allows them to contain any content imaginable, laid out in any way you wish using the new interactive layout editor in Orchard.
Editors can build slideshows ranging from the simplest to the most advanced, using interactive graphical tools. Quickly create slideshows by importing from existing images and other content items, or create dynamic slideshows based on projections and lists.
Each slide in a slideshow is actually a layout, allowing complete visual control and content flexibility. Editors can use the familiar graphical layout editor introduced in Orchard 1.9 to create slides.
Slideshows can be added directly to content items by adding the Slideshow Part to a content type. They can also be placed as Slideshow Widgets on widget layers. They can also be used as elements in layouts using the Slideshow Element.
Orchard is all about extensibility, and so are our Orchard modules. Developers can extend the functionality of the IDeliverable.Slides module with new slides providers and player engines.
A slideshow contains one or more slides. A slide represents one item of the slideshow, typically visualised as one "page" of the slideshow. Each slide is essentially a layout using the built-in Orchard.Layouts functionality in Orchard, allowing you to use the layout editor to define the content and layout of the slide.
Slides can be added to a slideshow in one of two ways:
- Statically at design-time, either by manually creating one or more slides from scratch, or by using one of the provided import tools to create slides based on a set of images or content items. Either way, the editor can completely customize the look of each slide using the layout editor.
- Dynamically at runtime based on a projection of content items. In this mode you base the slideshow on a query and optionally a display type. Alternatively a list of content items can be used. To customize the rendering of slides in this mode, a theme developer can override the shape template for the projected content type and the selected display type.
The slideshow is the actual component that you add to your site. This is the component that does the actual rendering. It comes in three flavors depending on the context in which you wish to use it:
- You can attach a slideshow part to your content types to render a slideshow as part of any content item.
- You can place a slideshow widget in any widget layer using the built-in
Orchard.Widgetsfunctionality in Orchard. - You can add a slideshow element to any layout using the built-in
Orchard.Layoutsfunctionality in Orchard.
To be rendered on the front-end of your site and made visible to visitors, a slideshow uses one of the provided player engines. IDeliverable.Slides provides player engines for three popular slideshow players out of the box:
- Bootstrap Carousel http://getbootstrap.com/javascript/#carousel
- Cycle2 http://sorgalla.com/jcarousel
- jCarousel http://sorgalla.com/jcarousel
Each player supports a wide range of configuration options. A player is selected per slideshow. To do this, a slideshow is configured with a player profile which is a stored set of configuration options for a particular player engine, allowing you to reuse those configuration options across slideshows. If you don't select a profile, the default player (jCarousel) will be used, with a default set of settings.
Just as IDeliverable.Slides uses the extensibility of the Orchard CMS to integrate with Orchard in an organic and natural way, it also mirrors this philosophy and itself provides several extensibility points, which you as a developer can utilize to extend the functionality of the module even further:
- Developers can create new slides providers by implementing the
ISlidesProviderinterface. A slides provider is a component that feeds a given slideshow with slides to render. The module provides three built-in providers (static selection, dynamic selection based on lists, and dynamic selection based on projections). - Developers can also create new player engines by implementing the
IPlayerEngineinterface. The player engine is the component that renders the slideshow to visitors using a particular slideshow player. The module provides trhee built-in player engines (targeting Bootstrap Carousel, Cycle2 and jCarousel, respectively).
To install the module from Orchard Gallery:
- In the Orchard admin UI, navigate to Modules -> Gallery.
- Search for "IDeliverable.Slides".
- Click Install to install the module.
To install the module using the ZIP file:
- Download the module ZIP file.
- Unzip the contents into the
Modulesfolder of your Orchard installation (this creates anIDeliverable.Slidessubfolder).
To integrate the module into your development workflow, unzip the contents into the Orchard.Web\Modules folder of your local repository and add it to source control (if any).
- Enable the feature Slides.
- When editing a layout, drag a new Slideshow element from the layout editor toolbox to your layout.
- Use the element editor dialog to configure your slideshow settings and add slides to your slideshow.
IDeliverable.Slides is compatibility-tested and supported on Orchard version 1.10.x. The module might also work on older or newer versions of Orchard but this is not guaranteed.
We make a commitment that the current release of our modules should always work with the current minor release of Orchard (e.g. 1.10) and across all subsequent revision releases (e.g. 1.10.1, 1.10.2 and so on). We strive to always conduct compatibility testing (and release an updated module if necessary) within two weeks of every new Orchard release.
The module provides the following features with their respective dependencies:
- Slides (
IDeliverable.Slides) depends onOrchard.Layouts,Orchard.JQueryandOrchard.MediaLibrary. - Projection Slides (
IDeliverable.Slides.Projections) depends onIDeliverable.Slides,Orchard.ProjectionsandOrchard.Forms. - List Slides (
IDeliverable.Slides.Lists) depends onIDeliverable.SlidesandOrchard.Lists.
If you want to learn more about how to install and configure IDeliverable.Slides as a site admin, or about how to use it to add awesome slideshows to your website as an editor, please check out our User Guide.
If you want to learn more about how to extend IDeliverable.Slides with more functionality (such as support for other slideshow components) as a developer, please check out our Developer Guide.