How To Add Charts And Graphs To WordPress

You’ve heard the old adage “a picture is worth a thousand words.” This certainly applies when you’re presenting and explaining data.

Using charts and graphs is great for making data a whole lot easier to grasp.

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

Charts and graphs help you present complex information so your audience can more easily understand it!

Need to add charts and graphs to WordPress? This tutorial shows you how to use WordPress Visualizer – a simple, easy to use and powerful plugin that lets you create, manage and embed colorful and interactive graphs into your WordPress posts and pages with a few mouse clicks that:

• Your web visitors can engage with
• Allows you to upload data from your computer or a web-based data source
• Will dynamically resize for mobile browsing

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

Use WordPress Chart & Graph Plugins

If you want to easily embed dynamic bar charts and pie graphs into 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 appealing and dynamic charts and graphs, it also lets you populate your charts and graphs with dynamic information.

Visualizer Plugin For WordPress

Visualizer Plugin URL

You can install the plugin inside your WordPress dashboard (explained a little further down the page), or access and download the Visualizer plugin here:

http://wordpress.org/plugins/visualizer

Visualizer Plugin Description

Visualizer is a simple, easy to use and powerful WordPress plugin that lets you create, manage and embed stunning and dynamic charts into your WordPress posts and pages in just 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 extra components are needed.

The plugin also contains a variety of charts that are optimized to address 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 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 web browsers without requiring the installation of additional plugins.

Plugin Installation

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

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

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

Click OK to continue …

Activate the plugin after successfully installing it …

You can also activate the plugin in the Plugins area …

Once the plugin has been activated, click on Library …

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

This brings up the plugin’s Visualizer Library settings …

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 publish to your content.

Plugin Configuration

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

A visual gallery displaying all of the types of graphs and charts available will come up on your screen.

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

The selected graph/chart type will pop up in a lightbox.

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

When creating your CSV data file, make sure that:

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

The screenshot below shows how to format your data …

If you are unsure about how to format your CSV file, just download the sample CSV file that comes 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 the CSV file and data from your computer select ‘From Computer‘ …

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

The plugin imports your data and displays it using the graph/chart type you have previously 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, see the article below:

• 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 picked, the plugin will display a number of customization options and settings …

Visualizer gives you complete control of your information, 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 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 graph or chart 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 in just a moment, this allows you to easily embed graphs and charts into your content …

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

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

Visualizer Usage

After you have created a chart or graph and added it to Visualizer, adding it to a post or page 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 your content and click on the ‘Add Media‘ button …

Click on ‘Visualizations‘ …

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

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

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

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

The element will show up in your content …

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

As you can see, WordPress Visualizer 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 very convenient if you’re adding dynamic graph information in WordPress.

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

For 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 easily insert interactive charts and graphs into WordPress.

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