How To Add Charts And Graphs To WordPress

You’re probably familiar with the old adage “a picture is worth a thousand words.” This is certainly true when you’re trying to present or explain complex information.

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

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

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

Need to add charts or graphs to your WordPress content? This tutorial shows you how to use WordPress Visualizer – a simple, easy to use and powerful plugin that lets you create, manage and insert great-looking and dynamic charts and graphs into your WordPress posts and pages that:

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

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

Use WordPress Chart & Graph Plugins

If you want to easily insert interactive bars and pie graphs into 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 beautiful and dynamic charts and graphs, it also lets you populate your charts and graphs with dynamic content.

Visualizer – WP Plugin

Plugin URL

You can install the plugin in your WordPress dashboard (explained a little further down the page), or access and download the Visualizer plugin from the link below:

http://wordpress.org/plugins/visualizer

Plugin Description

Visualizer is a simple, easy to use and powerful plugin that allows you to create, manage and embed beautiful charts and graphs into your WordPress posts and pages with a few mouse clicks.

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 plugins or add-ons are required.

WordPress Visualizer also contains 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

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 web design. Several 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 site visitors can see your charts and graphs on their mobile browsers without having to install extra software.

How To Install WordPress Visualizer

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

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

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

Click OK to continue …

Activate the plugin after installing it …

You can also activate the plugin in the Plugins area …

After your plugin has been activated, click on Library …

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

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

After installing the plugin, the library section will be empty.

The next step is to add add charts and graphs to your library.

Plugin Configuration

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

A page will appear on your browser displaying all of the kinds of graphs available.

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

The selected graph/chart type will open up in a lightbox.

The next step is to upload a CSV file that contains the data you want to populate your chart or graph with …

When creating your CSV data file, ensure that:

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

The screenshot below shows how to format your data as per the above requirements …

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

Once you have completed this step, 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 from your computer select ‘From Computer‘ …

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

The plugin imports your data from the CSV file and displays it using the graph/chart type you have previously chosen …

Upload CSV File From The Web

To learn 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 the data, check that all of your information is correct (if not, click on the ‘Back’ button and reupload a new data file containing the right data), and click ‘Next‘ …

Depending on the chart or graph type you’ve chosen, the plugin displays a number of customization options …

Visualizer gives you total control of your information, and updates your display in real time …

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

The new graph or chart will 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 allows you to add graphs and charts to your content quickly …

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

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

Plugin Usage

After creating a new chart or graph and adding it to the Visualizer Library, adding it to a post or page is really 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 Add Media …

Click on ‘Visualizations‘ …

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

This adds a shortcode for the element into your content …

After you have finished adding your shortcode, click on Publish to publish (or update) your content …

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

Your post or page displays the visual element in the location you specified …

As mentioned earlier, Visualizer also displays responsive graphs for mobile devices …

As you can see, Visualizer allows you to add and customize dynamic charts and graphs in your content. You can update your data and the changes will automatically be reflected throughout your website. This is one of the great benefits of using the Visualizer plugin if you’re managing dynamic graph information in WordPress.

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

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

• WordPress Visualizer – Additional Tutorials

Congratulations! Now you know how to add great-looking and dynamic charts and graphs to your WordPress pages and posts.

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