How To Add Charts And Graphs To WordPress
You’ve no doubt heard the old saying “a picture is worth a thousand words.” This certainly applies when you are presenting and explaining data.
Using graphs and charts is useful for making statistical data more easily digestible.
You can present data with tables, but if you want your audience to try and make sense of complex data with figures, percentages and comparisons more easily, then graphs and charts let you present data in a meaningful and intelligent way that can be quickly understood.
Graphs and charts help you present complex data so your audience can more easily interpret it!
Need to add charts and graphs to WordPress? This tutorial shows you how to use the WordPress Visualizer plugin – a simple, easy to use and powerful tool that allows you to create, manage and insert appealing and dynamic charts and graphs into your WordPress posts and pages in just a few mouse clicks that:
- Your visitors can interact with
- Lets you upload chart or graph data from your hard drive or an online source of data
- Dynamically resizes for mobile browsers
If you are displaying visual data like pie charts, comparison graphs or trending graphs that contain static information (e.g. historical data), an easier way to display the information is to create the graphs or charts using a desktop application, convert these into images and then simply add the image to your page or post.
Use WordPress Chart & Graph Plugins
If you want to easily add dynamic bars and graphs to WordPress 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 beautiful and dynamic graphs and charts, it also lets you populate your charts and graphs with updateable data.
Visualizer Plugin For WordPress
Visualizer URL
You can install the plugin in your WordPress dashboard (we explain how to do this a little further below), or access and download the WordPress Visualizer plugin the WordPress free plugin repository using the link below:
http://wordpress.org/plugins/visualizer
Visualizer Plugin Description
WP Visualizer is a simple, easy to use and powerful tool that lets you create, manage and insert great-looking and mobile-responsive graphs 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 additional plugins are needed.
WordPress Visualizer also provides a variety of charts that are optimized to address all your data visualization needs, including:
- Line chart
- Area chart
- Bar chart
- Column chart
- Pie chart
- Geo chart
- Gauge chart
- Candlestick chart
- Scatter chart
Visualizer is flexible and customizable, allowing you to use Google Chart Tools with their default setting, or configure an extensive set of options to match your site’s design. A number of options are available for each chart that let you customize their look and feel.
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 web visitors can see your charts and graphs on their mobile device browsers without having to install additional software.
How To Install Visualizer
Inside your WordPress admin area, select Plugins > Add New from the navigation sidebar menu …
In the Add Plugins page type in search for “visualizer” and hit enter …
Locate the entry in the search results section and click the “Install Now” button …
Click OK to continue …
Activate the plugin after installation is successful …
You can also activate the plugin in the Plugins area …
After your plugin has been activated, click on Library …
You can get to the plugin’s ‘library’ screen by choosing Media > Visualizer Library in your main menu …
This takes you to the plugin’s Visualizer Library options page …
After installing the plugin, this section will be empty.
Your next step is to add the charts and graphs to your library that you plan to publish to your posts and pages.
Visualizer Configuration
To add a new graph or chart to the plugin’s library, click on the Add New button …
A page will load in your browser displaying all of the built-in kinds of charts available.
Select the graph or chart type you would like to create and click on the ‘Next’ button …
Your selected graph/chart type will open up in a new window.
The next step is to upload a CSV file containing your data …
When creating your CSV data file, make sure that:
- The first row includes your column headings.
- The second row contains the series type (e.g. number, datetime, etc.)
The screenshot below shows how to format your data as explained above …
If you are not sure how to format your CSV file, simply refer to the sample that comes with the plugin.
Once you have done this, select the data source (‘From Computer’ or ‘From Web’) in the ‘Upload CSV File’ section.
Upload CSV File From Computer
To upload your CSV file from your hard drive select ‘From Computer‘ …
Locate and select your file and then click on ‘Open‘ …
The plugin imports the data and displays it using the graph/chart type selected …
Upload CSV File From The Web
To learn how to create, save and publish data to a Visualizer chart or graph using Google Spreadsheet, go here:
After importing the data, make sure that all of your information is correct (if not, click on the ‘Back’ button and reupload a data file containing the correct data), and click ‘Next‘ …
Depending on the chart or graph type you’ve selected, the plugin will display a range of customization options …
The WordPress Visualizer plugin gives you complete control over your information, and updates your display in real time …
For example, the pie chart offers various 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 happy with the look of your chart or graph, click Create Chart …
Your new graph or chart will now be added to the ‘Visualizer Library’ section …
Note that each visual element is given a unique ID displayed as a shortcode. As you will see in just a moment, this allows you to add graphs and charts to your WordPress content easily and quickly …
Graphs and charts added to the Visualizer Library can be accessed by type …
After adding a chart or graph to the ‘Visualizer Library’, you can edit its details, duplicate it, or delete it …
Visualizer Usage
After you’ve created a graph or chart and added it to Visualizer, adding it to a post is quite simple.
First, create a new post or page (or open an existing one) …
Next, place your mouse cursor where you would like to insert your visual element into the content and click on Add Media …
Click on ‘Visualizations‘ …
Select the element to be added to your content and click the “insert” icon …
This adds a shortcode for the element into your content …
After you have finished adding the item, click on Publish to publish (or update) your post or page …
Once your page/post has been published, click ‘View post’ to see the results …
You will see your chart or graph in the location where you have added the shortcode …
As mentioned earlier, Visualizer also displays responsive graphs for mobile browsers …
As you can see, the Visualizer plugin lets you add and customize dynamic charts and graphs in your content. You can update your data and the changes will automatically be reflected wherever you have inserted your charts, graphs, comparison bars , etc. in your website. This is great if you’re working with dynamic graph information in WordPress.
The plugin developers have created a series of tutorials you can refer to to learn how to edit, customize and use WordPress Visualizer.
For additional tutorials on editing, cloning, deleting and adding data to your charts, refer to the website below:
Congratulations! Now you know how to easily add appealing and dynamic charts and graphs to your WordPress posts and pages with WP Visualizer.
***
"Wow! I never knew there's so much to learn about WordPress! I bought one of the WordPress for Dummies three years ago, such authors need to be on this course!" - Rich Law, Create A Blog Now
***