How To Add Charts And Graphs To WordPress

You’ve heard the saying “a picture is worth a thousand words.” This certainly applies when you are presenting and explaining complex data.

Using graphs and charts is great for breaking up long chunks of text, and making statistical data and information simpler and easier to digest.

You can present data using tables, but if you want your audience to try and interpret complex data with numbers, trends and comparisons quickly, then charts and graphs let you present data in an intelligent and meaningful way that can be 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 how to create and add colourful and updateable charts and graphs to your WP posts and pages that:

• Your site visitors can interact with
• Lets you add data from your hard drive or a web-based source of data
• Will dynamically resize for viewing on mobile devices

If you are displaying visual data like bar charts, comparison data or trending graphs containing static information (e.g. historical data), a simple method you can use is to create your charts or graphs using a desktop application, convert these into .jpg and .png files and then simply insert the image files into your post or page.

Use WordPress Chart & Graph Plugins

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

Fortunately, there is a free plugin for WordPress sites that is simple to install, easy-to-use and allows you to not only create stunning and interactive graphs and charts, it also lets you populate your charts and graphs with updatable information.

Visualizer – WP Plugin

Plugin URL

You can install the plugin in your WordPress dashboard (we will show you how to do this a little further down the page), or download WP Visualizer here:

http://wordpress.org/plugins/visualizer

Plugin Description

WP Visualizer is an easy-to-use and powerful tool that lets you create, manage and insert mobile-responsive charts and graphs into your WordPress posts and pages with a few simple steps.

The plugin 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 add-ons are needed.

WordPress Visualizer also contains a variety of built-in 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 let you customize their look.

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 Visualizer

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

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

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

Click OK to proceed …

Activate the plugin after installation is successful …

You can also activate the plugin in the Plugins area …

Once the plugin has been activated, click on Library …

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

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

When you first install 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 insert into your content.

Plugin Configuration

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

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

Select the chart or graph 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 containing your data …

When creating your CSV data file, ensure that:

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

The screenshot below shows how to format your data …

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

Once you have done this, 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‘ …

Use the browser to locate and select your file and click on ‘Open‘ …

The plugin will import the data from the CSV file and display it using the graph/chart type you have chosen …

Upload CSV File From The Web

For a step-by-step tutorial that shows you 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 picked, the plugin will display a range of customization 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 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’re happy with how your chart or graph looks, click Create Chart …

The new chart or graph 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 in a moment, this lets you add charts and graphs to your WordPress posts very quickly …

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

After adding a new graph or chart to the ‘Visualizer Library’, you can edit its details, clone it, or delete it …

Visualizer Plugin Usage

After creating a graph or chart and adding it to the Library, it’s really very simple to insert it into pages or posts.

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‘ …

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

This inserts a shortcode for the element into your content …

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

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

Your page or post should display the chart or graph in the content …

As mentioned earlier, Visualizer also displays responsive charts and graphs for mobile viewers …

As you can see, the Visualizer plugin lets you add and customize dynamic charts and graphs in your content. You can modify your data and the changes will automatically be reflected wherever you have inserted your charts, graphs, comparison bars , etc. in your website. This is a real time-saving feature of the plugin if you’re working with interactive chart data in WordPress.

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

For additional 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 charts and graphs into WordPress with WordPress Visualizer plugin.

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