For the homepage Slideshow we recommend creating a gallery of carefully picked landscape/horizontal images all the same aspect ratio for the best presentation. You may want to hide this gallery from visitors. You will not be able to use private galleries or galleries with password protection. The gallery must be set to Public in Access Control in order for its images to be displayed on a public page like the homepage.
Please see this video for how to setup the homepage slideshow:
You may also want to review assigning a Soundtrack to your Homepage slideshow.
If you would like to display a slideshow on your homepage, you have many layouts to choose from.
There are 2 major display types to consider:
- Full screen & Widescreen slideshow display (images may be cropped)
- Classic display (allows for displaying uncropped images)
Full Screen & Widescreen Slideshow Layouts:
The full screen slideshow layouts will display the photos so that they will fit the entire width of a monitor or browser and only limit the height of the slide show.
This means your photos will stretch horizontally but not vertically. Because of this, photos that are vertical or portrait oriented may not be well suited for a full screen layout and in some cases vertical or portrait oriented photos may be cropped or cut off.
For the full screen slideshows, we recommend creating and assigning a gallery which contain landscape/horizontally oriented photos, and making sure the gallery is set to allow the display the largest display image size.
The largest size photos that can be displayed is 1550 pixels wide so it is important to make sure the photos in the gallery assigned to your slideshow/spotlight content are at least this large and that your Access Control settings, Largest allowed image size is set to XX-Large (1550 x 960).
If a monitor or browser is larger than 1550 pixels in width, the full screen slideshow will stretch or scale up the images to fit the entire width of the screen.
It is important to be aware that there are many different computer monitor sizes, with differing aspect ratios (width to height ratios), so a full screen slideshow may look different in one monitor compared to when it is viewed with a different monitor..
Some of the more common monitor sizes are:
- 16:10 (1280×800 and 1680×1050 displays),
- 16:9 (HD video standard)
- 4:3 (Old computer monitor standard)
Classic Display Slideshow:
The Classic slideshow layouts can show entire photographs as you have them uploaded into your gallery and they will not be cropped or stretched to fit the entire screen.
If you prefer a smaller slideshow where the entire photograph is displayed and/or if you use portrait/vertical oriented images, then the classic layouts are recommended.
See this guide for how to apply a different layout to your homepage.
As with applying different layouts, the Spotlight Content is also configured through Customize Website View.
In your account, hover your mouse pointer over Website then click on Customize Website.
The page will refresh with a new customization menu at the top confirming that you are in the Customize Website View.
Edit Spotlight Content:
- Click on Spotlight Content (Full screen layouts will show Background Content in the Customize toolbar instead).
- Or hover your mouse over the content area of your homepage and then click Edit.
Change Spotlight Content
If there is a different content already chosen for the Spotlight Content such as Photo or Video or Embedded content, you'll need to change the content to select the Slideshow.
- Click change next to Photo or Video or Embedded content
- Choose Slideshow.
Select Content:
- Click Select Content (if necessary).
- Select the desired gallery or collection that contain the images that you wish to use in your slideshow.
- Click Select to confirm choice.
- Click Update.
Set Options:
Depending on the slideshow layout, these options may vary.
- Click Set Options.
- If you wish, you will be able to select a Soundtrack for your slideshow.
- Determine the time and transition style for your images and whether you want them .
- Choose the color of the background and transition.
- Choose whether a slideshow controller should appear and its style (light or dark).
- Determine if thumbnails of the images will appear within the slideshow.
- Click Update when you're satisfied with your changes.
Set Layout:
The Set Layout options are only applicable for Classic slideshow layouts. Full screen and wide screen slideshows will not show you the following layout options.
- Click Set Layout.
- Choose to set the image size to Auto fit to Width (of the page) or choose the desired dimensions for the slideshow window.
- Choose to enable Browser Scaling. When enabled, the image will be scaled to fill the Spotlight Content window even when the window is larger than the image's largest available display image size. Not recommended for small images and when the site will be viewed with very large higher resolution monitors.
- Choose whether or not to show the border around the slideshow as it is set with the assigned theme.
- Click Update when you're satisfied with your changes.
Review the homepage with the new Spotlight Content in Customize Website View. Repeat the steps if you would like to make any changes to the Spotlight Content.
Once you're happy with the changes, click Publish before exiting Customize Website View to make those changes live on your site.