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 data.

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

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

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

If you need to display information visually and dynamically on your WordPress site using charts and graphs, this tutorial will show you exactly how to create colourful and updateable charts and graphs to your WordPress pages that:

• Your site visitors can interact with
• Lets you add data from your hard drive 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 a desktop application, convert these into images and then simply add your images to your posts or pages.

Use WordPress Chart & Graph Plugins

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

Fortunately, there is a great plugin for WordPress that is simple to install, easy-to-use and allows you to not only create appealing and dynamic graphs and charts, it also lets you populate your charts and graphs with updateable content.

Visualizer – WP Plugin

Visualizer Plugin URL

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

http://wordpress.org/plugins/visualizer

Plugin Description

WP Visualizer is a simple, easy to use and powerful tool that lets you create, manage and insert great-looking and mobile-responsive graphs and charts into your WordPress posts and pages in 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 additional plugins or add-ons are required.

WordPress Visualizer also comes with 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

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 your site’s design. Various options are available for each chart that allow you to 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 web visitors can see your charts and graphs on their mobile device browsers without having to install any additional plugins.

Plugin Installation

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

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

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

Click OK to go ahead …

Activate the plugin after successfully installing it …

You can also activate the plugin in the Plugins page …

After your plugin has been activated, click on Library …

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

This brings up the plugin’s Visualizer Library page …

After installing the plugin, this section will be empty.

Your next step is to add add charts and graphs to the plugin library.

Plugin Configuration

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

A gallery displaying all the kinds of charts and graphs available will load on your screen.

Select the type of chart or graph 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 the data you would like to populate your chart or graph with …

When creating your CSV data file, ensure that:

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

The screenshot below shows how to format your data as per the requirements above …

If you are not sure how to format your CSV file, simply use the sample provided with the plugin.

Once you have created your CSV file, 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 hard drive select ‘From Computer‘ …

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

The plugin imports your 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 the information is correct (if not, click on the ‘Back’ button and reupload a data file with the right data), and click ‘Next‘ …

Depending on the chart or graph type you’ve picked, the plugin displays a range of customization settings …

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 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 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 way your graph or chart looks, click on the ‘Create Chart’ button …

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

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

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

After an element has been added to the ‘Visualizer Library’, you can edit it, clone it, or trash it …

Plugin Usage

After creating a chart or graph and adding it to the Library, it’s easy 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 would like 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 will add a shortcode into your content …

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

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

Your post or page should display your chart or graph in where you have inserted the shortcode …

As mentioned previously, Visualizer also displays responsive elements for mobile browsing …

As you can see, the Visualizer plugin lets you add and customize dynamic charts and graphs in your content. You can change your data and your changes will automatically be reflected throughout your site. This makes working with dynamic graph data in WordPress really efficient.

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

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

• WordPress Visualizer – Additional Tutorials

Congratulations! Now you know how to insert stunning bar charts and graphs into your WordPress pages and posts.

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