How to add a slideshow

Ashford Pro (sorry free users) eye-popping Hero Slideshow to any page on your site. Use these large format slides (e.g. 300px by 940px) on landing pages where you want to increase the number of conversions.

What is a Slideshow Hero?

A Slideshow Hero is places a series of large format panels  the top of the parent page which displays a large format image pulling from its child pages.

Creating the parent page

This is the parent page that will hosts the Slideshow Hero.

• Create images exactly 940px wide by 240px tall
• Edit or create a page (this can use any page template).
• Find Pro Page Settings panel then find “Custom fields for Hero Pro”
• Find “Hero Type” and enter “slidewhow”
• Save the parent page

Creating the child pages

These are the pages that host content shown on the parent page.

• Create 2-6 child pages (over 6 gets to be overkill)
• The child pages can use any page template
• For each child page find “Featured Image” panel in the right sidebar
  • Click “Set featured image”
  • Upload an image (940px by 240px)
  • Click the “Use as featured image” link located next to the “Insert into Post”
  • When Ashford Pro uploads an image it automatically creates a “hero” image 940px (proportionally tall) behind the scenes. This is the image that is used by the Slider.
  • Click Save all changes and close the media panel
• Click Publish or Update to save these changes for each child page
• Do this for each child page

After you finish adding images to each child page, return to the parent page and Hero Slideshow will be displayed. Slider shows the image. The Slideshow automatically links the image to the child page.

Advanced Tip: how to removing child pages from menu

If you do not want the child pages to show up in your dynamic menu,

• Download, install and activate Excluded Pages plugin
• Edit each child page
• Find “exclude pages” panel in right sidebar. This removes the child pages from appearing in your navigation menus

Advanced Tip: how to not link directly to child pages

If you do not want the Slideshow to link directly to the child pages,

• Edit each child page
• Choose “301 redirect” as your page template
• Add a custom field
  • name = redirect
  • value= http://yoursite.com/ (e.g. the FULL URL where you want the page to redirect)

What happens? The child pages still are used to build panels on the parent page hosting the Slideshow — but when you click the slide — it hits the child page but redirects it to your link AND does not show the child page.