Slide Show Options for WordPress

There’s lots of different things to consider if you plan to present your content using slide shows in WordPress.

Hosting Slideshow Content

If you host your slideshows on your own server you will be using more resources every time someone views your slideshow.
If you host your content externally, you’ll be giving away an outbound link every time you embed a slideshow on you site and sending some traffic away from your site. On the other hand, you’ll be saving on server resources which could be significant if you create a large amount of slide shows.

Power Point & PDF’S

If you create your slideshows in Power Point, you can save them as PDF’s and display them using a number of different tools which we’ll check out in a minute. This way you can host them internally or externally.
If you use a free online service like Google Doc’s, you can’t host your slideshows on your own server and viewers can click through to Google Docs to view your content on Google’s domain.

Google Doc Embedder Plugin

This plugin has been developed to allow you to host your own slideshows on your own server and use Google viewer to view them.

You can host Microsoft Office files like PowerPoint and display them using a shortcode in your posts. Personally, i found it better to save the Power Point Presentation as a PDF file rather than upload a pptx file to the WordPress Media library.

You can also allow download of your PDF file.

Google Docs

This is a great way to host your slideshows externally and embed them in WordPress. The result is very much the same as using the Google Doc Ember Plugin however you’re hosting your content on Google’s servers.

There’s at least 2 ways you can use Google Docs for slideshows.

You can create your slide shows using Power Point, save them as PDF files and then upload your PDF files into Google Docs.
You can create your slide shows in Google Docs from scratch very easily.

Slideshare

Good exposure to other slide share users
Upload PDF files to display as slide shows
Each time you embed a presentation it links back to Slideshares website.
Other peoples slide shows appear at the end of your slide shows.
Easy to Embed in WordPress with a link back to your Slideshare profile page.

Scribd

Host your slideshows on Scribd servers
Some exposure from other Scribd users
Slide Shows contains link back to Scribd
Abide by their terms of use

Things To Consider

Pretty clear here that services which allow you to host your content on their servers do so for a reason. You also abide by their terms and conditions.

On the other hand, you could get more views by choosing the right service than what you’d get directly to your domain depending on the different factors like rankings and ongoing marketing efforts.

Whats been your experience with slideshows? Do you have a favorite method that’s worked well for you?