How To Add Charts And Graphs To WordPress

You’re probably familiar with the saying “a picture is worth a thousand words.” This is certainly true when you are presenting or explaining complex data.

Using graphs and charts is useful for breaking up long passage of technical information, and making technical or statistical data simpler and easier to grasp.

You can present information with tables, but if you want people to try and interpret complex data with numbers, trends and relationships quickly, then graphs and charts are perfect for helping them understand the information.

Graphs and charts help explain complex data so your audience can more easily interpret it!

If you need to learn how to present information visually and dynamically on your WordPress site using charts and graphs, this tutorial will show you exactly how to create and add colourful and interactive graphs and charts to your WordPress pages that:

• Your site visitors can interact with
• Lets you upload graph or chart data from your hard drive or an online source of data
• Is fully responsive for mobile device browsing

If you plan to display visual data like bar charts, comparison bars or trending graphs containing information that is not going to change (e.g. historical data), an easier option is to create the charts or graphs using an image editing application, convert these into images and then simply insert your images into your posts or pages.

Use WordPress Chart & Graph Plugins

If you want to easily create interactive bars and pie charts 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 users that is simple to install, easy-to-use and allows you to not only create appealing and dynamic charts and graphs, it also lets you populate your charts and graphs with updateable content.

Visualizer

Visualizer Plugin URL

You can install the plugin from your WordPress dashboard (explained further down the page), or download WordPress Visualizer the WordPress plugin directory using the link below:

http://wordpress.org/plugins/visualizer

Visualizer Plugin Description

The Visualizer plugin is a simple, easy to use and powerful tool that allows you to create, manage and insert beautiful graphs and charts into your WordPress posts and pages with 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 extra add-ons are required.

Visualizer also contains a variety of charts 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

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 site’s design. Various options are available for each chart that allow you to further 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 site visitors can see your charts and graphs on their mobile devices without having to install any extra software.

Plugin Installation

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

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

Locate the item in the search results area and click the “Install Now” button …

Click OK to go ahead …

Activate the plugin …

You can also activate the plugin in the Plugins section …

Once your plugin has been activated, click on Library …

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

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

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

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

How To Configure The Plugin

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 different types of charts available.

Select the chart or graph 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 that contains all the data you want your chart or graph to be populated with …

When creating your CSV data file, ensure that:

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

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

If you are unsure about how to format your data CSV, just refer to the sample file that comes 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 and data from your hard drive select ‘From Computer‘ …

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

The plugin will import your data and display it using the graph/chart type selected …

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 your information is correct (if not, click on the ‘Back’ button and reupload a new data file containing the right data), and then click ‘Next‘ …

Depending on the chart or graph type you have chosen, the plugin will display various customization settings and options …

The WordPress Visualizer plugin gives you complete control of your information, 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 are happy with how your chart or graph looks, click on the ‘Create Chart’ button …

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

Note that every element is given a unique ID displayed as a shortcode. As you will see in just a moment, this allows you to easily embed graphs and charts into your content …

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

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

Visualizer Plugin Usage

After creating a graph or chart and adding it to Visualizer, 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 to be inserted into your content and click on the “insert” icon …

This will add a shortcode into your content …

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

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

Your post or page will display your chart or graph in the location where you have added the shortcode …

As mentioned previously, Visualizer also displays responsive elements for mobile devices …

As you can see, WordPress Visualizer lets you add and customize dynamic charts and graphs in your content. You can modify your data and your changes will automatically be reflected throughout your website. This is a real time-saving benefit of the plugin if you’re managing dynamic graph information in WordPress.

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

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

• WordPress Visualizer – Additional Tutorials

Congratulations! Now you know how to create stunning and dynamic bar charts and graphs in WordPress.

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