How To Add Charts And Graphs To WordPress

You’ve no doubt heard the old adage “a picture is worth a thousand words.” This is certainly true when you are trying to present and explain complex information.

Using charts and graphs is great for breaking up long text passages, and making statistical data and information more easily digestible.

You can present data with tables, but if you want your audience to try and interpret complex information with numbers, percentages and comparisons easily, then charts and graphs are perfect for helping them understand the data.

Charts and graphs help you present complex data so people can more easily understand it!

If you want to learn how to present information visually and dynamically on your WordPress site using charts and graphs, this tutorial will show you exactly how to create and add attractive and interactive charts and graphs to your posts that:

• Your site visitors can engage with
• Allows you to add data from your hard drive or a web-based source of data
• Is fully responsive for mobile viewing

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

Use WordPress Chart & Graph Plugins

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

Fortunately, there is a free plugin for WordPress 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 data.

Visualizer Plugin For WordPress

Visualizer Plugin URL

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

http://wordpress.org/plugins/visualizer

Visualizer Description

Visualizer is a simple, easy to use and powerful plugin that allows you to create, manage and embed appealing charts and graphs into your WordPress posts and pages with just a few mouse clicks.

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 or add-ons are needed.

WordPress 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

Visualizer is a flexible and customizable plugin, allowing you to use Google Chart Tools with their default setting, or configure an extensive set of options to match your site’s design. Various options are available for each chart that allow you to fully 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 web visitors can see your charts and graphs on their mobile browsers without having to install any additional software.

Plugin Installation

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

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

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

Click OK to go ahead …

Activate the plugin …

You can also activate the plugin in the Plugins section …

After your plugin has been activated, click on Library …

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

This brings up the plugin’s Visualizer Library options page …

After installing the plugin, the library contains no charts.

Your next step is to add the charts and graphs to your library that you will want to insert into your posts or pages.

How To Configure The Visualizer Plugin

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

A page will load on your screen with all of the kinds of graphs and charts available.

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

The selected 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, ensure that:

• The first row contains the 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 unsure about how to format your CSV file, simply use the sample file that comes 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 computer select ‘From Computer‘ …

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

The plugin imports the data from the CSV file 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 your data, check that all of your 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’ve selected, the plugin will display various customization options …

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

For example, the pie chart offers many 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 the 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 on the ‘Create Chart’ button …

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

Note that every element is given a unique ID displayed in a shortcode. As you will see very soon, this allows you to easily embed charts and graphs into your content …

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

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

Plugin Usage

Once you’ve created a element and added it to the Visualizer Library, it’s quite simple to insert it into your pages and posts.

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 chart or graph you want to add to your content and click the “insert” icon …

This adds a shortcode into your content …

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

After updating the post/page, click ‘View post’ to see the result …

Your page or post should display the item in the location where you have added the shortcode …

As mentioned earlier, Visualizer also displays responsive charts and graphs for mobile device viewing …

As you can see, the Visualizer plugin 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 website. This makes adding interactive graph information in WordPress very easy.

The developers of this plugin have created a series 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, go to the website below:

• WordPress Visualizer – Additional Tutorials

Congratulations! Now you know how to easily insert great-looking and dynamic pie charts and graphs into WordPress with WordPress Visualizer.

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