Depicter - Hit or Miss?
By Arnd
Have you ever worked with sliders?
A slider refers to website content that typically presents itself in a nicely animated page-by-page format, somewhat like a PowerPoint presentation. Making all of this responsive — meaning independent of the display size of the device being used — is by no means trivial. This is where plugins like "Depicter" come into play ....
But how does it work?
The prerequisite is a working WordPress installation where you can also install plugins. For "playing around" and quickly setting up servers, I personally find Cloudways great. It costs roughly double the bare VM costs that Vultr, DigitalOcean and the like would normally charge, but it takes care of an incredible amount of routine work for hosting a WordPress site.
Alternatively, you can of course use any hosting provider you like. A cheaper option is for example SiteGround, which also offers Amsterdam as a European location.
Even with the free version of Depicter you can create sliders like this in just a few minutes:
I installed the free version of Depicter, which I discovered through the YouTube channel of WpTuts. And as you may (or may not) see from the slider, there are problems with its display. Even though it's displayed correctly in the Depicter user interface and in the WordPress preview. Sometimes I was also able to reproduce strange error messages in the user interface that made further editing of the sliders almost impossible.
But: all of this of course makes the WordPress system more complex and therefore more error-prone. My advice would be to try achieving a similarly good result with built-in tools. Or to very consistently use just one tool like Depicter if you want to score points in your web presence with exactly this kind of presentation.
If you're interested in sliders, there are also various themes optimized for video or photo portfolios such as INSPIRO. Which also cause significantly less bloat. Or you can use tools like Bricks Builder or Breakdance where you can also create full-page sliders quite easily. But admittedly: without getting more deeply into the subject, you won't get very far.