How To Add Charts And Graphs To WordPress
You’re probably familiar with the saying “a picture is worth a thousand words.” This certainly applies when you’re presenting or explaining complex data.
Charts and graphs are a great way to break up long passage of technical information, and make technical or statistical data more easily digestible.
You can use tables to present data, but if you want people to try and make sense of complex information with figures, percentages or relationships more easily, then graphs and charts allow you to present your data in a meaningful and intelligent way that can be easily processed.
Charts and graphs help present complex data so your audience can more easily understand it!
Need to add charts and graphs to your WordPress posts and pages? This step-by-step tutorial shows you how to use WordPress Visualizer – a simple, easy to use and powerful plugin for WordPress that allows you to create, manage and embed great-looking and mobile-responsive charts and graphs into your WordPress posts and pages that:
- Your site visitors can interact with
- Lets you add data from your computer or an online source of data
- Is fully responsive for mobile viewers
If you plan to display visual data like pie charts, comparison bars or trending graphs containing static information (e.g. historical data), a simple method you can use to add your information is to create your graphs or charts using a desktop application, convert these into .jpg and .png images and then simply insert the image files into your pages.
Use WordPress Chart & Graph Plugins
If you want to easily add dynamic bars and pie graphs to WordPress posts with no coding skills required, the easiest way to do this is to use a plugin.
Fortunately, there is a great plugin for WordPress that is simple to install, easy-to-use and allows you to not only create colorful and mobile-responsive charts and graphs, it also lets you populate your charts and graphs with updatable information.
Visualizer Plugin For WordPress
Visualizer Plugin URL
You can install the plugin in your WordPress dashboard (we will show you how to do this a little further below), or access and download Visualizer here:
http://wordpress.org/plugins/visualizer
Plugin Description
Visualizer is a simple, easy to use and powerful plugin for WordPress that allows you to create, manage and insert stunning and interactive charts into your WordPress posts and pages in just a few mouse clicks.
WordPress Visualizer uses Google Visualization API to render charts, which support cross-browser compatibility (adopting VML for older IE versions) and cross-platform portability to iOS and new Android releases, and are based on pure HTML5/SVG technology (adopting VML for old IE versions), so no extra components are required.
Visualizer also provides a variety of built-in optimized for your data visualization needs, including:
- Line chart
- Area chart
- Bar chart
- Column chart
- Pie chart
- Geo chart
- Gauge chart
- Candlestick chart
- Scatter chart
WordPress Visualizer is also flexible and customizable, allowing you to use Google Chart Tools with their default setting, or configure an extensive set of options to match your web design. A number of options are available for each chart that let you customize their look.
Additionally, charts are rendered using HTML5/SVG technology to provide cross-browser compatibility (including VML for older IE versions) and cross-platform portability to iPhones, iPads and Android devices. Your blog or site visitors can see your charts and graphs on their mobile devices without having to install any additional software.
Plugin Installation
From your WordPress dashboard, select Plugins > Add New from the dashboard menu …
In the Add Plugins page type in “visualizer” into the search field and hit enter …
Locate the item in the search results area and click the “Install Now” button …
Click OK to go ahead …
Activate the plugin after installing it …
You can also activate the plugin in the Plugins area …
Once the plugin has been activated, click on Library …
You can also get to the plugin’s ‘library’ screen by choosing Media > Visualizer Library from your dashboard menu …
This takes you to the plugin’s Visualizer Library section …
When you first install the plugin, the library contains no charts.
Your next step is to add the charts and graphs to your library that you plan to display in your posts and pages.
How To Configure Visualizer
To add a new chart or graph to the library, click on the ‘Add New’ button …
A visual gallery displaying all the different types of charts and graphs available will come up on your screen.
Select the chart or graph type you would like to create and click on the ‘Next’ button …
Your graph/chart type will pop up in a lightbox.
The next step is to upload a CSV file with your data …
When creating your CSV data file, ensure that:
- The first row contains the column headings.
- The second row includes the series type (e.g. boolean, datetime, etc.)
The screenshot below shows how to format your data as required …
If you are unsure about how to format your CSV file, simply study the sample that comes with the plugin.
Next, select the data source (‘From Computer’ or ‘From Web’) in the ‘Upload CSV File’ section.
Upload CSV File From Computer
To upload a CSV file from your hard drive select ‘From Computer‘ …
Locate and select your data file and then click on ‘Open‘ …
The plugin imports the data and displays it using the graph/chart type chosen …
Upload CSV File From The Web
To learn how to create, save and publish data to a Visualizer chart or graph using Google Spreadsheet, see the article below:
After importing the data, check that all of the information is correct (if not, click on the ‘Back’ button and reupload a data file with the right data), and then click ‘Next‘ …
Depending on the chart or graph type selected, the plugin displays a range of customization settings …
Visualizer gives you full control of your information, and updates your display in real time …
For example, the pie chart offers many configurable options, such as:
- General Settings – Configure settings for the chart’s title, font styles, tooltip, and legend.
- Pie Settings – Create 3D pie charts, draw slices counterclockwise, set the text content displayed on the slice, create a “donut” pie chart, rotate the chart’s “start” angle and set the slice border color.
- Residue Settings – Set the ‘Visibility Threshold’ (the slice relative part, below which a slice will not show individually.), ‘Residual Slice Label’ (the label for the combination slice that holds all slices below slice visibility threshold, e.g. “Other”), and ‘Residue Slice Color’.
- Slice Settings – Customize the ‘Slice Offset’ (how far to separate a slice from the rest of the pie), and ‘Slice Color’.
- Layout & Chart Area – Configure the layout (total size of chart) including the width and height of the chart as a number of percentage, background color for the main area of the chart and the chart border width and color, and the placement and size of the chart area (where the chart itself is drawn, excluding axis and legends).
Once you are satisfied with how your chart or graph looks, click Create Chart …
Your graph or chart will be added to your Visualizer ‘Library’ …
Note that every new element is given a unique ID displayed as a shortcode. As you will see in a moment, this allows you to insert graphs and charts into your WordPress posts easily …
Graphs and charts added to the Visualizer Library can be accessed by their type …
After adding a graph or chart to the ‘Visualizer Library’, you can edit it, clone it, or delete it …
Plugin Usage
After creating a new element and adding it to Visualizer, adding it to a page or post is very simple.
First, create a new post or page (or open an existing one) …
Next, place your mouse cursor where you want to insert your visual element into your content and click on Add Media …
Click on ‘Visualizations‘ …
Select the graph or chart you want to add to your content and click on the “insert” icon …
This will place a shortcode for the element into your content …
Once you have finished adding the visual element, click on Publish to publish (or update) your page or post …
After the page/post has been published, click ‘View post’ to see it …
Your page or post should display the chart in where you have inserted the shortcode …
As mentioned previously, Visualizer also displays responsive visual elements for mobile users …
As you can see, Visualizer allows you to insert and customize dynamic charts and graphs in your content. You can update your data and the changes will automatically be reflected throughout your site. This makes working with interactive graph data in WordPress very easy.
The developers of this plugin have created a series of tutorials you can refer to for ways to edit, customize and use the plugin.
For tutorials on editing, cloning, deleting and adding data to your charts, visit the website below:
Congratulations! Now you know how to create eye-catching and mobile-responsive pie charts and graphs in WordPress.
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