How To Add Charts And Graphs To WordPress

You’ve heard the old adage “a picture is worth a thousand words.” This certainly applies when you’re presenting and explaining data.

Charts and graphs help to make statistical data more easily digestible.

You can present data with tables, but if you want people to try and interpret complex data with numbers, percentages or comparisons easily, then charts and graphs are perfect for helping them understand your data.

Graphs and charts help you present complex information so people can more easily understand it!

Need to add charts and graphs to your WordPress posts? This step-by-step tutorial shows you how to use WP Visualizer – an easy-to-use and powerful plugin that lets you create, manage and embed appealing and dynamic charts into your WordPress posts and pages that:

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

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

Use WordPress Chart & Graph Plugins

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

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

WordPress Plugin: Visualizer

Visualizer Plugin URL

You can install the plugin from your WP dashboard (see a little further below), or access and download Visualizer from the link below:

http://wordpress.org/plugins/visualizer

Visualizer Plugin Description

WordPress Visualizer is an easy-to-use and powerful plugin that allows you to create, manage and embed great-looking and interactive charts and graphs into your WordPress posts and pages with just 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 add-ons are needed.

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 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 site’s design. Several options are available for each chart that let you further 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 visitors can see your charts and graphs on their mobile web browsers without requiring the installation of additional software.

Plugin Installation

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

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

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

Click OK to continue …

Activate the plugin …

You can also activate the plugin in the Plugins area …

After the plugin has been activated, click on Library …

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

This takes you to the plugin’s Visualizer Library section …

When you first install the plugin, the library contains no charts.

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

Visualizer Configuration

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

An image gallery displaying all the types of charts available will load on your screen.

Select the graph or chart type 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 the column headings.
• The second row contains the series type (e.g. string, date, etc.)

The screenshot below shows how to format your data …

If you are not sure how to format your data CSV, just refer to the sample 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 a CSV file and data from your computer select ‘From Computer‘ …

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

The plugin imports your data and displays it using the graph/chart type you have previously selected …

Upload CSV File From The Web

For a tutorial that explains 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 your 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 you’ve picked, the plugin will display various customization options and settings …

The WordPress Visualizer plugin gives you full 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 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 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 the way your chart or graph appears, click on the ‘Create Chart’ button …

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

Note that every new element is given a unique ID displayed as a shortcode. As you will see very soon, this lets you add charts and graphs to your content quickly and easily …

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

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

Visualizer Plugin Usage

After you’ve created a new chart or graph and added it to the Library, adding it to a post is really 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 your content and click on Add Media …

Click on ‘Visualizations‘ …

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

This will add a shortcode into your content …

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

After the page has been published, click ‘View post’ to see the result …

Your post or page should display your graph or chart in the location you specified …

As mentioned previously, the plugin also displays responsive graphs for mobile device browsing …

As you can see, Visualizer allows you to add and customize dynamic charts and graphs in your content. You can change your data and the changes will automatically be reflected wherever you have inserted your charts, graphs, comparison bars , etc. in your website. This makes working with interactive chart data in WordPress really efficient.

The plugin developers have created a series of tutorials you can refer to for ways to edit, customize and use the plugin.

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

• WordPress Visualizer – Additional Tutorials

Congratulations! Now you know how to easily add stunning and interactive bar charts and graphs to WordPress with WordPress Visualizer plugin.

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