Thanks for your question – I know WordPress can be a lot of detail to work through when it’s all new.
You wrote “a regular slideshow might be [gallery type=”slideshow” … “; let’s start there. WordPress provides the [gallery] shortcode, which on its own creates “a gallery of the images”. The [mla_gallery] shortcode MLA provides is like [gallery] with lots of additional features.
There are many, many lightbox and slideshow plugins that work with the [gallery] shortcode to provide more complex displays. Most of these use the “hooks” (actions and filters) that [gallery] provides so plugins can extend it. You can read about actions and filters here: Plugin API.
The hooks built in to [mla_gallery] have different names and effects; they’re great, but other plugins don’t use them. However, there is an MLA feature that may help you get the results you want. You can read all about MLA’s “Support for Other Gallery-generating Shortcodes” in the Settings/Media Library Assistant Documentation tab.
Basically, the idea is to use [mla_gallery] to select the items you want to display and then hand off the list of items to another shortcode to compose the gallery display. For your application you can use post_tag=tag-name (for Tags) or attachment_tag=tag-name (for Att. Tags) to select the items and then add an mla_alt_shortcode=gallery parameter to hand off the items to the [gallery] shortcode to do the rest. Your regular slideshow can be coded as:
[mla_gallery type="slideshow" size="medium" ttfmake_slider="true" post_tag=tag-name mla_alt_shortcode=gallery]
The type, size and ttfmake_slider parameters will be passed through to the [gallery] shortcode for its use.
Give the above suggestion a try and let me know how it works for you. If you are still having trouble, tell me what plugin you are using to create the slideshows, or just list all the other plugins you have installed. It’s also possible that your theme includes the slideshow features, but that’s less likely.
I will leave this topic unresolved until I hear back from you. I am confident we can find a way to make your application work. Thanks for your interest in the plugin.
