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 is certainly true when you’re presenting and explaining data.

Charts and graphs are a great way to break up long text passages, and make technical or statistical data more easily digestible.

You can present information with tables, but if you want people to try and make sense of complex data with numbers, percentages or comparisons more easily, then charts and graphs are perfect for helping them visualize your data.

Graphs and charts help you explain complex information so your audience can more easily understand it!

Need to add charts or graphs to WordPress? This tutorial shows you how to use WordPress Visualizer – a simple, easy to use and powerful tool that lets you create, manage and embed colorful charts into your WordPress posts and pages in just a few simple steps that:

• Your site visitors can interact with
• Lets you add data from your hard drive or an online source of data
• Is fully responsive for mobile browsing

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 to add your information is to create the graphs or charts using an image editing application, convert these into jpg or png images and then simply insert your image into your posts.

Use WordPress Chart & Graph Plugins

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

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

WP Plugin: Visualizer

Plugin URL

You can install the plugin from your WP dashboard (we will explain how to do this a little further below), or download Visualizer here:

http://wordpress.org/plugins/visualizer

Visualizer Description

Visualizer is a simple, easy to use and powerful tool that lets you create, manage and embed attractive and mobile-responsive graphs and charts into your WordPress posts and pages with 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 plugins are required.

Visualizer also contains a variety of charts 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 your site’s design. Several 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 web visitors can see your charts and graphs on their mobile devices without requiring the installation of any additional software.

Plugin Installation

Inside your WordPress administration area, select Plugins > Add New from the main sidebar menu …

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

Locate the item in the search results screen and click the “Install Now” button …

Click OK to proceed …

Activate the plugin …

You can also activate the plugin in the Plugins page …

After the plugin has been activated, click on Library …

You can also get to the plugin’s ‘library’ screen by selecting Media > Visualizer Library from your main menu …

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

When you first install the plugin, the library contains no charts.

The next step is to add the charts and graphs to your library that you plan to insert into your pages and posts.

How To Configure The Plugin

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

You will see all of the types of graphs and charts available.

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

The graph/chart type will open up in a lightbox.

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

When creating your CSV data file, make sure that:

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

The screenshot below shows how to format your data correctly …

If you are not sure how to format your CSV file, simply refer to the sample spreadsheet 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 your CSV file from your computer select ‘From Computer‘ …

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

The plugin imports your 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, go here:

• How To Populate Data Using Google Spreadsheet

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

Depending on the chart or graph type you’ve selected, the plugin displays a number of customization options and settings …

The WordPress Visualizer plugin gives you complete control of your chart or graph, and updates your display in real time …

For example, the pie chart offers various configurable options, including:

• 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 the look of your chart or graph, click Create Chart …

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

Note that new visual elements are given a unique ID displayed in a shortcode. As you will see shortly, this lets you easily embed graphs and charts into your content …

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

After adding a new element to the ‘Visualizer Library’, you can edit it, duplicate it, or trash it …

Visualizer Plugin Usage

After you have created a new graph or chart and added it to the Library, it’s really very simple to insert it into a page.

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 the ‘Add Media‘ button …

Click on ‘Visualizations‘ …

Select the graph or chart to be inserted into your content and click the “insert” icon …

This adds a shortcode into your content …

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

After the page has been updated, click ‘View post’ to see the end result …

Your page or post displays the graph or chart in the location where you placed the shortcode …

As mentioned previously, Visualizer also displays responsive charts and graphs for viewing on mobile devices …

As you can see, Visualizer allows you to add and customize dynamic charts and graphs in your content. You can change your data and your changes will automatically be reflected wherever you have inserted your charts, graphs, comparison bars , etc. in your site. This is a real time-saving feature of the plugin if you’re working with dynamic graph data in WordPress.

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

For additional 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 create eye-catching and dynamic charts and graphs in WordPress with WP Visualizer plugin.

***

***