How To Add Charts And Graphs To WordPress

No doubt you’re familiar with the old adage “a picture is worth a thousand words.” This certainly applies when you’re trying to present or explain complex information.

Using graphs and charts can help to break up long chunks of text, and make data simpler and easier to understand.

You can present information with tables, but if you want your audience to try and interpret complex data with numbers, percentages or relationships quickly, then graphs and charts let you present your information in an intelligent and meaningful manner that can be easily processed.

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

Need to add charts or graphs to WordPress? This tutorial shows you how to use WP Visualizer – a simple, easy to use and powerful tool that allows you to create, manage and insert stunning and interactive graphs into your WordPress posts and pages that:

• Your web visitors can engage with
• Lets you add graph or chart data from your hard drive or a web-based source of data
• Will resize dynamically for mobile devices

If you plan to display visual data like pie charts, comparison charts or trending graphs which contain information that is not going to change (e.g. historical data), a simple method you can use to display the information is to create your charts or graphs using an image editing application, convert these into .jpg or .png images and then simply insert your image files into your posts.

Use WordPress Chart & Graph Plugins

If you want to create dynamic bar charts and graphs in WordPress with no coding skills required, the easiest way to do this is to use a plugin.

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

Visualizer Plugin For WordPress

Plugin URL

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

http://wordpress.org/plugins/visualizer

Visualizer Description

WP Visualizer is a simple, easy to use and powerful tool that lets you create, manage and insert stunning and mobile-responsive charts into your WordPress posts and pages in 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 additional components are required.

Visualizer also comes with a variety of charts that are optimized to address all your data visualization needs, including:

• Line chart
• Area chart
• Bar chart
• Column chart
• Pie chart
• Geo chart
• Gauge chart
• Candlestick chart
• Scatter chart

WordPress Visualizer 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 web design. Several options are available for each chart that let you 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 having to install extra software.

Plugin Installation

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

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

Locate the plugin in the search results screen and click Install Now …

Click OK to go ahead …

Activate the plugin after installation is successful …

You can also activate the plugin in the Plugins section …

After your plugin has been activated, click on Library …

You can get to the plugin’s ‘library’ screen by choosing 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.

Your next step is to add the charts and graphs to your library that you plan to insert into your content.

How To Configure The Visualizer Plugin

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

A page will appear in your screen with all of the default types of graphs and charts available.

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

Your selected graph/chart type will open up in a new window.

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

When creating your CSV data file, make sure that:

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

The screenshot below shows how to format your data as explained above …

If you are not sure how to format your data CSV, just use the sample file supplied with the plugin.

Next, 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 hard drive select ‘From Computer‘ …

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

The plugin will import the data and display it using the graph/chart type you have previously 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 the information is correct (if not, click on the ‘Back’ button and reupload a data file containing the right data), and then click ‘Next‘ …

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

Visualizer gives you complete control of your chart or graph, 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 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’re satisfied with the way your graph or chart looks, click Create Chart …

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

Note that new elements are given a unique ID displayed in a shortcode. As you will see shortly, this lets you easily insert charts and graphs into your content …

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

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

Visualizer Usage

After creating a chart or graph and adding it to the Library, adding it to pages or posts is very 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 chart or graph you want to add to your content and click on the “insert” icon …

This adds a shortcode for the element into your content …

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

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

You will see your visual element in where you have inserted the shortcode …

As mentioned previously, the plugin also displays responsive graphs and charts for mobile devices …

As you can see, Visualizer lets you insert and customize dynamic charts and graphs in your content. You can edit your data and the changes will automatically be reflected wherever you have inserted your charts, graphs, comparison bars , etc. in your site. This makes managing interactive chart data in WordPress really efficient.

The plugin developers have created a series of tutorials you can refer to to learn how to edit, customize and use WordPress Visualizer.

For additional 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 add attractive and interactive pie charts and graphs to WordPress.

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