How To Add Charts And Graphs To WordPress

You’ve heard the adage “a picture is worth a thousand words.” This certainly applies when you’re presenting or explaining complex information.

Charts and graphs can help to break up long text passages, and make statistical data easier to grasp.

You can use tables to present information, but if you want people to try and interpret complex data with numbers, trends or comparisons more easily, then charts and graphs let you present information in an intelligent and meaningful manner that can be easily understood.

Charts and graphs help present complex information so people can more easily interpret it!

If you want to display dynamic visual content on your WordPress site using charts and graphs, this step-by-step tutorial will show you how to create and add appealing and updatable charts to your WordPress pages and posts that:

• Your web visitors can interact with
• Lets you add chart or graph data from your computer or a web-based data source
• Will dynamically resize for mobile browsers

If you are displaying visual data like bar charts, comparison graphs or trending graphs that contain static information (e.g. historical data), a simple method you can use is to create the charts or graphs using an image editing application, convert these into jpg and png files and then simply insert the image files into your web content.

Use WordPress Chart & Graph Plugins

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

Fortunately, there is a free WordPress plugin that is simple to install, easy-to-use and allows you to not only create attractive and mobile-responsive graphs and charts, it also lets you populate your charts and graphs with dynamic information.

WP Plugin: Visualizer

Plugin URL

You can install the plugin in your WP dashboard (explained further below), or download the Visualizer plugin here:

http://wordpress.org/plugins/visualizer

Plugin Description

WordPress Visualizer is a simple, easy to use and powerful tool that lets you create, manage and embed eye-catching charts into your WordPress posts and pages with just a few simple steps.

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 or add-ons are required.

Visualizer also provides a variety of charts 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

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 the look and feel of your website. Various options are available for each chart that let you further customize their settings.

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 site visitors can see your charts and graphs on their mobile web browsers without requiring the installation of extra plugins.

How To Install The Visualizer Plugin

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

In the Add Plugins screen type search for “visualizer” and hit enter …

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

Click OK to proceed …

Activate the plugin …

You can also activate the plugin in the Plugins area …

After your plugin has been activated, click on Library …

You can also 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 settings screen …

After installing the plugin, the library section will be empty.

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

How To Configure Visualizer

To add a new graph or chart to the library, click on the Add New button …

A page will load on your screen displaying all of the different kinds of graphs available.

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

The graph/chart type will pop up in a new window.

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

When creating your CSV data file, make sure that:

• The first row contains your column headings.
• The second row contains the series type (e.g. string, datetime, etc.)

The screenshot below shows how to format your data correctly …

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

Once you have completed this step, select the data source (‘From Computer’ or ‘From Web’) in the ‘Upload CSV File’ section.

Upload CSV File From Computer

To upload the CSV file and data from your hard drive select ‘From Computer‘ …

Locate and select your file and then click on ‘Open‘ …

The plugin will import the data and display it using the graph/chart type you have selected …

Upload CSV File From The Web

For a tutorial that explains 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 your 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 then click ‘Next‘ …

Depending on the chart or graph type you have selected, the plugin will display a range of customization options and settings …

Visualizer gives you full 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 way your graph or chart appears, click on the ‘Create Chart’ button …

Your chart or graph will be added to the Visualizer ‘Library’ …

Note that new visual elements are given a unique ID displayed in a shortcode. As you will see shortly, this lets you add graphs and charts to your WordPress pages and posts quickly and easily …

Graphs and charts added to the Visualizer Library can easily be accessed by their type …

After an item has been added to the ‘Visualizer Library’, you can edit its details, clone it, or delete it …

Visualizer Usage

After creating a chart or graph and adding it to the Visualizer Library, adding it to your content is really 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 the content and click on Add Media …

Click on ‘Visualizations‘ …

Find the graph or chart to be added to your content and click on the “insert” icon …

This will add a shortcode into your content …

Once you have added your shortcode, click on Publish to publish (or update) your content …

After publishing your page, click ‘View post’ to see the end result …

Your visual element will display in the location you specified …

As mentioned earlier, Visualizer also displays responsive elements for viewing on mobile devices …

As you can see, the Visualizer plugin lets you insert 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 site. This is a real time-saver if you’re managing dynamic chart information in WordPress.

The developers of this plugin have created a series of step-by-step tutorials you can refer to for ways to edit, customize and use Visualizer.

For additional tutorials on editing, cloning, deleting and adding data to your charts, go to the site below:

• WordPress Visualizer – Additional Tutorials

Congratulations! Now you know how to add colorful and interactive bar charts and graphs to your WordPress content.

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