How to Add Featured Post Slider to Thesis WordPress Theme

In today’s tutorial for thesis theme users, I’ll share how to add a featured post slider to thesis WordPress theme. Featured post sliders are best to showcase your best posts on homepage. You can add posts with breaking news or latest giveaways to featured post slider to gain more attention of your readers.

Adding a featured post slider to thesis theme is not a difficult task. It is added by just installing a single plugin – Smooth Slider. Slider can be easily customized from options page. Below is a screenshot of slider that we are going to use in this tutorial:

Note: This tutorial require that you install thesis WordPress theme to your blog first. If you don’t have thesis theme, you can get it now.

How to add Featured Post Slider to Thesis WordPress theme

Step 1. First login to your WordPress dashboard and install “Smooth Slider” WordPress plugin. You can install the plugin using FTP or directly via dashboard. (Plugins -> Add New)

Step 2. After installation, activate the plugin.

Step 3. Now you need to add some posts to the slider. For this purpose, go to Dashboard -> Posts and click on Edit under a published post. Now scroll down to the page and check Add this post to smooth slider. After this update the post.

Step 4. Navigate to Thesis -> Custom File Editor and select custom_functions.php and add the following code to it. After you add the code, click on Bug Save button.

// Featured Post Slider for Thesis by TricksDaddy.com
function featured_post_slider() { ?>
php if (is_home()){ ?>
php if ( function_exists( 'get_smooth_slider' ) ) { get_smooth_slider(); } ?>
<?php }
}
add_action('thesis_hook_before_content', 'featured_post_slider');

Step 5. Now navigate to your blog homepage and check the slider. It’s working now. But you may need some customization to make to look like your blog theme.

Step 6. Open Smooth Slider settings from left sidebar of your WordPress dashboard.

Step 7. On the settings page, you can customize the slider width, height, border and navigation buttons. You can also customize font type, color and styles. Once you are done with all the required settings, click on the Save Changes button.

That’s all to add a featured post slider to thesis WordPress theme. I hope you like this tutorial. If you face any problem in any step, feel free to drop your comments here.