Introduction
Meet WP Carousel — what it is, what it does, and how these docs help you build your first carousel.
Welcome to WP Carousel. It’s a WordPress plugin for building carousels, sliders, marquees, and tile galleries from the content you already have — images in your Media Library, blog posts, WooCommerce products, YouTube/Vimeo videos, audio embeds, or even an RSS feed — without writing code.
If you’ve never used a carousel plugin before, here’s the mental model in one sentence: you drop a block (a ready-made piece of content) onto a page, tell it what to show (the content source), and use the inspector (the settings sidebar on the right) to control how it looks and moves.
What you can build
WP Carousel ships seven display blocks — each is a different layout for the same idea (“show a set of items”):
| Block | In one line |
|---|---|
| Carousel | Several items side by side that slide left/right (or up/down). |
| 3D Carousel | Same idea, with a 3D rotating stage. |
| Panorama Carousel | Ultra-wide scrolling for images and video. |
| Slider | One big slide at a time — great for heroes. |
| Thumbnails Slider | One main slide plus a strip of clickable thumbs. |
| Tiles | A static grid / mosaic — add filters and search here. |
| Marquee | Endless scrolling ticker (logos, images, posts). |
One of the seven isn’t out yet
The 3D Carousel is documented here but hasn’t shipped yet — it shows as Coming Soon on the Blocks dashboard. The other six are all available today.
On top of that you get:
- Child blocks for Tiles — Gallery Filter and Ajax Search — so visitors can narrow a gallery without reloading the page.
- Modules you switch on only when you need them: lightbox, watermark, password protection and scheduling, hover animations, motion effects, ready-made patterns, and saved templates. A few more are announced but not released yet — see Modules.
- An AI Carousel Builder that turns a sentence into a configured block, if you'd rather describe the result than build it. You supply your own AI provider key; it's entirely optional.
- A classic shortcode builder (Manage Carousels) if you prefer the older admin UI or need a shortcode for a page builder.
Explore the Live Demo or jump straight to the block library.
Why people pick it
- One plugin, many layouts — and you can transform a block into any of the others later, carrying your content and every shared setting with it.
- Content you already have — no separate “carousel items” database for the block workflow; point at images, posts, or products and go.
- Editor-first — design inside Gutenberg with a live preview. Prefer Elementor/Divi/Bricks? Save a template and drop its shortcode in.
- Optional complexity — turn features off in Modules so the inspector stays calm.
Two ways to work (blocks vs classic)
| Blocks (recommended) | Classic | |
|---|---|---|
| Where you build | On the page itself | WP Carousel → Manage Carousels |
| How visitors see it | The block is the page content | You paste [sp_wpcarousel id="…"] somewhere |
| Best when | You’re in the block editor or Full Site Editing | You live in a page builder or already have shortcodes |
New here? Start with blocks. The classic path is documented under Classic Version when you need it.
Words you'll see a lot
Four terms show up on almost every page. If any are new, here they are in one line each:
| Term | What it means |
|---|---|
| Block | A ready-made piece of content you drop onto a page in the WordPress editor. |
| Inspector | The settings sidebar on the right of the editor, visible whenever a block is selected. |
| Content source | Where a block's items come from — images, posts, products, video, audio, or an outside feed. |
| Shortcode | A short piece of text in square brackets, like [sp_wpcarousel id="42"], that WordPress swaps for real content on the page. |
How these docs are organized
- Getting Started — requirements, install, license, a Quick Start that points you to the right path, and the Content Sources reference.
- Blocks — one page per block. Read the Carousel page once; it’s the full shared-settings reference. Other block pages only cover what’s unique, then link back.
- Classic Version — Manage Carousels, shortcodes, and the older settings screen.
- Features — the AI builder, watermark, lightbox, password, scheduling, patterns, plus performance and accessibility guides.
- Admin Dashboard — toggles for blocks and modules, templates, integrations, settings.
- Help — the FAQ, Best Practices, Troubleshooting, a plain-English Glossary, and what happens when you uninstall.
- Developers — hooks, shortcodes and block attributes, template overrides, and the REST API.
New to WordPress?
Any unfamiliar word in these docs — block, inspector, shortcode, content source — is defined in the Glossary. No need to read it first; just look things up as you go.
Ready to start?
- Check Requirements.
- Install and activate your license.
- Follow the Quick Start to pick Blocks or Classic and publish something real.
Stuck at any point? The FAQ answers the common questions, and Troubleshooting covers the things that go wrong.
