How To Add Charts And Graphs To WordPress

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

Using charts and graphs is useful for breaking up long text passages, and making technical or statistical data much simpler to understand.

You can present data using tables, but if you want people to try and make sense of complex data with numbers, percentages or relationships quickly, then charts and graphs are perfect for helping them visualize the information.

Charts and graphs help you explain complex information so your audience can more easily understand it!

Need to add charts and graphs to your WordPress pages? This step-by-step tutorial shows you how to use WordPress Visualizer – a simple, easy to use and powerful tool that allows you to create, manage and embed beautiful and interactive charts and graphs into your WordPress posts and pages that:

• Your web visitors can interact with
• Lets you upload data from your computer or a web-based source of data
• Dynamically resizes for viewing on mobile devices

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

Use WordPress Chart & Graph Plugins

If you want to easily embed dynamic bar charts and pie charts into 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 that is simple to install, easy-to-use and allows you to not only create colorful 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 inside your WP dashboard (explained a little further down the page), or access and download WordPress Visualizer from the link below:

http://wordpress.org/plugins/visualizer

Visualizer Plugin Description

WP Visualizer is a simple, easy to use and powerful plugin for WordPress that allows you to create, manage and embed attractive and interactive charts into your WordPress posts and pages in 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 add-ons are required.

Visualizer also provides 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

WordPress 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 web design. Various 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 site visitors can see your charts and graphs on their mobile web browsers without having to install any additional software.

How To Install WordPress Visualizer

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

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

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

Click OK to proceed …

Activate the plugin after successfully installing it …

You can also activate the plugin in the Plugins area …

After the plugin has been activated, click on Library …

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

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

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

The next step is to add the charts and graphs to your library that you will want to display in your posts and pages.

Plugin Configuration

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

A gallery displaying all the kinds of charts available will come up on your screen.

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

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

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

When creating your CSV data file, ensure that:

• Your first row includes your 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, simply download the sample CSV file provided 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 the CSV file and data from your computer select ‘From Computer‘ …

Locate and select your data file and 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, 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 click ‘Next‘ …

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

The plugin 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’re satisfied with the look of your chart or graph, click on the ‘Create Chart’ button …

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

Note that each element is given a unique ID displayed in a shortcode. As you will see in a moment, this allows you to insert charts and graphs into your WordPress posts easily and quickly …

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

After an element has been added to the ‘Visualizer Library’, you can edit it, clone it, or delete it …

Visualizer Usage

After creating a chart or graph and adding it to the Visualizer Library, it’s easy to add it to a page or post.

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

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

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

Once the page/post has been published, click ‘View post’ to see the results …

The element will show in your content …

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

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

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

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

• WordPress Visualizer – Additional Tutorials

Congratulations! Now you know how to easily add appealing and mobile-responsive bar charts and graphs to WordPress with WordPress Visualizer plugin.

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