We are proud to announce that we released WordPress slider plugin Featured Articles PRO version 3.1 that comes with new features and some bug fixes.

The most notable feature in this version is the third-party slider scripts compatibility that allows you to merge the powerful plugin functionality of selecting WordPress posts to be showcased into WordPress sliders with any jQuery slider script.

In version 3.1 we introduced this feature into a new WordPress slider theme based on the well known slider script Nivo Slider. This new theme is available in both PRO and Lite versions of Featured Articles.

WordPress slider theme – Nivo Slider

Below you can see theme Dark for theme Nivo Slider. The theme implements a total of 4 templates: Light, Dark, Bar and Default. We implemented the slider script to be video enabled and responsive.

[fa_slider id=”2148″ singular=”false” title=”” show_title=”” width=”750″ height=”400″ font_size=”100″ full_width=”1″ top=”20″ bottom=”20″ show_slide_title=”1″ show_content=”1″ show_date=”1″ show_read_more=”1″ show_play_video=”1″ img_click=”” auto_slide=””]

Also in this release we updated the plugin to use YouTube API V3 when creating video slides; this will require you to enter your YouTube API key into the plugin settings in order to be able to query YouTube for videos.

The complete changelog for version 3.1 of Featured Articles PRO – WordPress slider plugin can be found below:

• Theme Accordion starter script modified to fire on document ready event instead of window load;
• Solved a bug in slider script that in some cases was loading wrong image position leaving visible only part of the image;
• Introduced a new option for theme Simple that controls if the bar timer should be displayed or not when autoslide is on;
• Added new filter “fa-preload-styles” that allows setting of different styling for slider preloaders;
• Modified templating function “the_fa_image()” to set class “no-image” on video container if slide doesn’t have image but has video attached to it;
• Modified slider class to dissalow loading of scripts if slider theme doesn’t require them. This can be done by passing the handles used to enqueue scripts: slider, accordion, carousel, jquery-mobile, jquery-transit, round-timer, video-player;
• Added a new parameter to templating function “the_fa_video()” that allows displaying of overlay link to trigger video playback;
• New option to display slide edit settings on allowed posts edit pages;
• Solved a display bug for sliders published into dynamic areas that wasn’t displaying correctly the pages where the slider is published in sliders admin table;
• Solved a display bug for sliders published into dynamic areas that wasn’t displaying correctly the pages where the slider is published in dynamic areas page;
• Solved a bug that was displaying sliders if slider created from a post type that used to exist but doesn’t at the current time;
• Solved a bug that wasn’t redirecting correctly and outputted a PHP error when saving plugin settings on some installations;
• Added shortcode support for Lite version when upgrading ( FA_Lite shortcode supported );
• YouTube Data API V3 support ( also introduces new option in plugin Settings page for API key );
• New slider theme based on Nivo Slider script;
• Solved a bug in slider theme Navobar navigation;
• Brand new video embed script;
• New option for theme Simple to adjust the height to each slide content while navigating slides;
• Solved themes Cristal and Navobar animations bug;
• Added new animation effects.