How To Add Charts And Graphs To WordPress

You’ve no doubt heard the saying “a picture is worth a thousand words.” This is certainly true when you’re trying to present or explain complex data.

Charts and graphs help to break up long and boring text, and make statistical data more easily digestible.

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

Graphs and charts help explain complex data so people can more easily interpret it!

If you need to learn how to present dynamic visual content on your WordPress site like graphs and charts, this step-by-step tutorial will show you exactly how to create beautiful and updatable charts to your WP posts and pages that:

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

If you are displaying visual data like pie charts, comparison bars or trending graphs that contain static information (e.g. historical data), a simple method you can use to display this data is to create the graphs or charts using an image editing application, convert these into images and then simply insert your images into your content.

Use WordPress Chart & Graph Plugins

If you want to add interactive bars and pie charts to your WordPress posts and pages 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 colorful and mobile-responsive charts and graphs, it also lets you populate your charts and graphs with updateable information.

WP Plugin: Visualizer

Plugin URL

You can install the plugin from your WP dashboard (see further below), or download Visualizer here:

http://wordpress.org/plugins/visualizer

Plugin Description

WP Visualizer is a simple, easy to use and powerful plugin that lets you create, manage and embed eye-catching and mobile-responsive charts and graphs 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 additional addons are required.

WordPress Visualizer also provides 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

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. A number of options are available for each chart that allow you to further 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 web browsers without requiring the installation of additional plugins.

Plugin Installation

Inside your WP admin area, select Plugins > Add New from the dashboard menu …

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

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

Click OK to continue …

Activate the plugin after installing it …

You can also activate the plugin in the Plugins section …

Once the plugin has been activated, click on Library …

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

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

When you first install the plugin, the library will contain no charts.

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

How To Configure Visualizer

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

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

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 lightbox.

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:

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

The screenshot below shows how to format your data …

If you are not sure how to format your CSV file, simply download the sample CSV file supplied 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 your CSV file from your hard drive select ‘From Computer‘ …

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

The plugin will now import your data and display 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 the data, make sure that all of the information is correct (if not, click on the ‘Back’ button and reupload a new data file with the correct data), and then click ‘Next‘ …

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

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

For example, the pie chart offers various 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 happy with the look of your graph or chart, click on the ‘Create Chart’ button …

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

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

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

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

Visualizer Usage

After creating a chart or graph and adding it to Visualizer, adding it to a page is really simple.

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‘ …

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

This inserts 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 your page/post, click ‘View post’ to see the end result …

You will see the element in your content …

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

As you can see, Visualizer lets you insert 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 dynamic graph information in WordPress very easy.

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

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

• WordPress Visualizer – Additional Tutorials

Congratulations! Now you know how to create colorful and dynamic charts and graphs in WordPress with WP Visualizer plugin.

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