How To Add Charts And Graphs To WordPress

You’ve no doubt heard the adage “a picture is worth a thousand words.” This is certainly true when you are presenting or explaining data.

Using graphs and charts is a great way to break up long text passages, and make technical data a lot easier to grasp.

You can present data with tables, but if you want your audience to try and interpret complex data with numbers, trends or comparisons more easily, then charts and graphs allow you to present the information in a meaningful and intelligent way that can be quickly and easily processed.

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

If you want to learn how to display dynamic visual content on your WordPress site like graphs and charts, this step-by-step tutorial will show you how to create appealing and updateable charts to your WP pages that:

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

If you plan to display visual data like bar charts, comparison data or trending graphs that contain static information (e.g. historical data), a simple method you can use is to create your graphs or charts using a desktop application, convert these into images and then simply insert your files and an image into your posts or pages.

Use WordPress Chart & Graph Plugins

If you want to easily embed dynamic bar charts and pie graphs into your WordPress posts 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 beautiful and mobile-responsive graphs and charts, it also lets you populate your charts and graphs with dynamic information.

Visualizer Plugin For WordPress

Visualizer URL

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

http://wordpress.org/plugins/visualizer

Visualizer Description

WP Visualizer is an easy-to-use and powerful plugin that allows you to create, manage and insert great-looking and dynamic graphs into your WordPress posts and pages with a few simple steps.

The plugin 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.

The plugin also provides 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 your site’s design. Various 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 browsers without requiring the installation of additional plugins.

How To Install Visualizer

From your WP dashboard, select Plugins > Add New from the dashboard menu …

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

Locate the entry in the search results area and click Install Now …

Click OK to continue …

Activate the plugin after installation is successful …

You can also activate the plugin in the Plugins area …

After the plugin has been activated, click on Library …

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

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

After installing the plugin, the library contains no charts.

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

Plugin Configuration

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

You will see all the kinds of graphs available.

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

Your 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:

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

The screenshot below shows how to format your data …

If you are unsure about how to format your data CSV, simply refer to the sample file provided with the plugin.

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

Upload CSV File From Computer

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

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

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

Upload CSV File From The Web

For a step-by-step tutorial that explains how to create, save and publish data to a Visualizer chart or graph using Google Spreadsheet, see the article below:

• 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 new data file with the correct data), and click ‘Next‘ …

Depending on the chart or graph type you have chosen, the plugin displays a number of customization settings and 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, 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 how your graph or chart looks, click Create Chart …

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

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

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

After a new graph or chart has been added to the ‘Visualizer Library’, you can edit it, clone it, or delete it …

Visualizer Plugin Usage

Once you’ve created a graph or chart and added it to the Library, it’s simple to insert it into your content.

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

This inserts a shortcode for the element into your content …

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

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

Your chart will appear in where you’ve inserted the shortcode …

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

As you can see, Visualizer 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 site. This is one of the great benefits of using the Visualizer plugin if you’re working with dynamic graph data in WordPress.

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 additional tutorials on editing, copying, deleting and adding data to your charts, refer to the site below:

• WordPress Visualizer – Additional Tutorials

Congratulations! Now you know how to easily create attractive and mobile-responsive bar charts and graphs in WordPress.

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