Note: Total Slider is not in active development at this time.
Total Slider is a plugin for WordPress from Van Patten Media that helps web developers build sliders that can be easily managed by non-technical users.
Build your own templates in HTML/PHP, CSS, and JavaScript, and Total Slider will supply a WYSIWYG interface.
Total Slider makes editing sliders easy, but it typically needs to be installed and configured by an experienced developer first. Out of the box, Total Slider does not provide a way to edit your theme, add previous/next buttons, and otherwise customise the look of the slider without diving into code.
If you're looking for a slider solution that won't involve editing code to set it up, Total Slider probably is not for you.
Total Slider allows you to create any number of ‘slide groups’. Each slide in the group can be given a title, some description text, a background image and, optionally, a link. You can then have these displayed in a slideshow interface on a portion of your page. You can also choose a theme for each group, making it easy to have multiple sliders visible in multiple areas of your site with completely different visual looks.
Once this plugin is installed and activated, use the Slider tab in your WordPress dashboard to assemble a group of slides with text, backgrounds and so on. You can then have the slides show up on any page of your site using the Total Slider widget.
Go to Appearance > Widgets in WordPress and drag a new Total Slider widget to the correct area. Then, simply select the slide group to show in this area of your site.
For more information, do check out the user documentation, or the developer documentation.