How To Add Charts And Graphs To WordPress

You’ve no doubt heard the old saying “a picture is worth a thousand words.” This is certainly true when you’re presenting and explaining data.

Using graphs and charts is great for breaking up long chunks of text, and making technical or statistical data more easily digestible.

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

Charts and graphs help you present complex data so people can more easily interpret it!

If you need to display dynamic visual content on your WordPress site like graphs and charts, this tutorial will show you exactly how to create and add appealing and interactive charts and graphs to your pages that:

• Your visitors can interact with
• Lets you add chart or graph data from your hard drive or an online data source
• Resizes dynamically for mobile screens

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

Use WordPress Chart & Graph Plugins

If you want to easily add dynamic bar charts and pie charts to WordPress pages and 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 users that is simple to install, easy-to-use and allows you to not only create stunning and mobile-responsive charts and graphs, it also lets you populate your charts and graphs with updateable information.

Visualizer Plugin For WordPress

Plugin URL

You can install the plugin inside your WP dashboard (we explain how to do this a little further down the page), or download the Visualizer plugin the WP plugin directory using the link below:

http://wordpress.org/plugins/visualizer

Visualizer Description

Visualizer is a simple, easy to use and powerful plugin for WordPress that lets you create, manage and insert beautiful and dynamic graphs into your WordPress posts and pages with a few simple steps.

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 needed.

WordPress Visualizer also comes with a variety of built-in 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

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 web design. Several options are available for each chart that allow you to 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 device browsers without having to install additional software.

How To Install WordPress Visualizer

From your WordPress administration area, select Plugins > Add New from the main menu …

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

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

Click OK to proceed …

Activate the plugin after successfully installing it …

You can also activate the plugin in the Plugins page …

Once your plugin has been activated, click on Library …

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

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

After installing the plugin, the library will contain no charts.

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

Plugin Configuration

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

An image gallery displaying all of the built-in types 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 …

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

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

When creating your CSV data file, make sure that:

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

The screenshot below shows how to format your data as required …

If you are not sure how to format your CSV file, just download the sample file that comes 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 and data from your hard drive 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 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 data file with the right data), and then click ‘Next‘ …

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

Visualizer gives you full control over 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 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 are happy with how your chart or graph appears, click Create Chart …

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

Note that each visual element is given a unique ID displayed as a shortcode. As you will see shortly, this lets you add graphs and charts to your posts quickly and easily …

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

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

Visualizer Plugin Usage

After you have created a new element and added it to the Visualizer Library, adding it to a post is very 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 the content and click on the ‘Add Media‘ button …

Click on ‘Visualizations‘ …

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

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

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

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

The visual element will show up in the content …

As mentioned previously, the plugin also displays responsive elements for mobile users …

As you can see, the Visualizer plugin allows you to insert and customize dynamic charts and graphs in your content. You can modify your data and your changes will automatically be reflected wherever you have inserted your charts, graphs, comparison bars , etc. in your site. This is great if you’re working with dynamic graph data in WordPress.

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

For 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 insert eye-catching charts and graphs into your WordPress pages and posts with WordPress Visualizer plugin.

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