How To Add Charts And Graphs To WordPress

No doubt you’re familiar with the old saying “a picture is worth a thousand words.” This certainly applies when you are presenting and explaining data.

Using charts and graphs can help to break up long text passages, and make technical data more easily digestible.

You can present information using tables, but if you want people to try and make sense of complex information with figures, trends and relationships quickly, then charts and graphs let you present your data in an intelligent and meaningful manner that can be easily processed.

Graphs and charts help you present complex data so people can more easily understand it!

If you need to present information visually and dynamically on your WordPress site like charts and graphs, this step-by-step tutorial will show you how to create and add beautiful and updatable charts and graphs to your pages and posts that:

• Your site visitors can interact with
• Allows you to upload chart or graph data from your computer or a web-based data source
• Will dynamically resize for mobile devices

If you plan to display visual data like pie charts, comparison charts or trending graphs containing information that is not going to change (e.g. historical data), a simple method you can use to add this information is to create your graphs or charts using an image editing application, convert these into images and then simply insert the image files into your posts or pages.

Use WordPress Chart & Graph Plugins

If you want to easily add dynamic bar charts and pie graphs to your WordPress content with no coding skills required, the easiest way to do this is to use a plugin.

Fortunately, there is a plugin for WordPress sites that is simple to install, easy-to-use and allows you to not only create appealing and dynamic graphs and charts, it also lets you populate your charts and graphs with updatable data.

WordPress Plugin: Visualizer

Plugin URL

You can install the plugin from your WordPress dashboard (we show you how to do this a little further below), or download Visualizer the WP free plugin directory using the link below:

http://wordpress.org/plugins/visualizer

Visualizer Plugin Description

Visualizer is an easy-to-use and powerful plugin for WordPress that lets you create, manage and insert colorful and interactive charts and graphs into your WordPress posts and pages with a few simple steps.

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 or add-ons are required.

Visualizer also comes with a variety of built-in optimized for all your data visualization needs, including:

• Line chart
• Area chart
• Bar chart
• Column chart
• Pie chart
• Geo chart
• Gauge chart
• Candlestick chart
• Scatter chart

The plugin 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 the look and feel of your website. Several options are available for each chart that allow you to fully 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 visitors can see your charts and graphs on their mobile devices without having to install any extra plugins.

How To Install Visualizer

From your WordPress admin area, select Plugins > Add New from the main sidebar menu …

In the Add Plugins page type in “visualizer” into the search field and click enter …

Locate the plugin in the search results section and click Install Now …

Click OK to proceed …

Activate the plugin after successfully installing it …

You can also activate the plugin in the Plugins area …

Once your plugin has been activated, click on Library …

You can get to the plugin’s ‘library’ screen by choosing Media > Visualizer Library in the main menu …

This takes you to the plugin’s Visualizer Library screen …

When you first install the plugin, the library will contain no charts.

Your next step is to add the charts and graphs to your library that you will want to display in your pages and posts.

Plugin 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 screen displaying all of the built-in kinds of graphs available.

Select the type of chart or graph you would like to create and click on the ‘Next’ button …

Your selected graph/chart type will open up in a lightbox.

The next step is to upload a CSV file containing your data …

When creating your CSV data file, ensure that:

• The first row contains the column headings.
• Your second row includes the series type (e.g. boolean, date, etc.)

The screenshot below shows how to format your data as required …

If you are not sure how to format your CSV file, just use the sample CSV file supplied with the plugin.

Once you have created your CSV file, select your data source (‘From Computer’ or ‘From Web’) in the ‘Upload CSV File’ section.

Upload CSV File From Computer

To upload your CSV file and data from your computer select ‘From Computer‘ …

Use the browser to locate and select your file and click on ‘Open‘ …

The plugin imports your 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:

• How To Populate Data Using Google Spreadsheet

After importing the data, make sure that all of the information is correct (if not, click on the ‘Back’ button and reupload a new data file with the right data), and click ‘Next‘ …

Depending on the chart or graph type you have selected, the plugin displays various customization options and settings …

The plugin gives you total control over your chart or graph, and updates your display in real time …

For example, the pie chart offers many configurable options, such as:

• General Settings – Configure chart title settings, 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 on the ‘Create Chart’ button …

The new chart or graph will be added to your ‘Visualizer Library’ section …

Note that new visual elements are given a unique ID displayed as a shortcode. As you will see very soon, this lets you add charts and graphs to your posts very easily …

Charts and graphs added to the Visualizer Library can easily be accessed by type …

After an element has been added to the ‘Visualizer Library’, you can edit its details, duplicate it, or trash it …

Visualizer Plugin Usage

After creating a chart or graph and adding it to Visualizer, it’s simple to insert it into posts and pages.

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 the content and click on Add Media …

Click on ‘Visualizations‘ …

Find the element you want to insert into your content and click on the “insert” icon …

This will add a shortcode for the element into your content …

Once you have finished adding your visual element, click on Publish to publish (or update) your post or page …

Once the post/page has been published, click ‘View post’ to see it …

You will see the visual element in the content …

As mentioned earlier, the plugin also displays responsive visual elements for mobile device users …

As you can see, the Visualizer plugin lets you insert and customize dynamic charts and graphs in your content. You can change your data and the changes will automatically be reflected throughout your website. This makes adding interactive graph data in WordPress really easy.

The plugin developers have created a number of tutorials you can use to learn how to edit, customize and use WordPress Visualizer.

For tutorials on editing, copying, deleting and adding data to your charts, visit the website below:

• WordPress Visualizer – Additional Tutorials

Congratulations! Now you know how to insert mobile-responsive bar charts and graphs into WordPress with WordPress Visualizer plugin.

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