How To Add Charts And Graphs To WordPress

You’ve heard the old adage “a picture is worth a thousand words.” This is certainly true when you are presenting or explaining complex data.

Graphs and charts can help to break up long text passages, and make data more easily digestible.

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

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

Need to add charts or graphs to your WordPress posts? This tutorial shows you how to use WP Visualizer – an easy-to-use and powerful plugin for WordPress that lets you create, manage and embed attractive and mobile-responsive graphs and charts into your WordPress posts and pages in just a few simple steps that:

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

If you plan to display visual data like pie 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 images and then simply insert your image files into your content.

Use WordPress Chart & Graph Plugins

If you want to easily embed interactive bar charts 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 users that is simple to install, easy-to-use and allows you to not only create attractive and mobile-responsive graphs and charts, it also lets you populate your charts and graphs with dynamic data.

Visualizer

Plugin URL

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

http://wordpress.org/plugins/visualizer

Visualizer Plugin Description

WP Visualizer is a simple, easy to use and powerful tool that allows you to create, manage and embed eye-catching graphs and charts 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 plugins or add-ons are required.

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

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 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 blog or site visitors can see your charts and graphs on their mobile browsers without having to install any extra software.

How To Install The Visualizer Plugin

Inside your WP admin area, select Plugins > Add New from the dashboard menu …

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

Locate the item 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 page …

After the plugin has been activated, click on Library …

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

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

When you first install the plugin, the library will contain no charts.

Your 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 library, click on the Add New button …

A gallery displaying all of the built-in kinds of 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 …

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

The next step is to upload a CSV file with your data …

When creating your CSV data file, ensure that:

• The first row includes the column headings.
• Your second row contains the series type (e.g. number, datetime, etc.)

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

If you are not sure how to format your CSV file, just use the sample spreadsheet provided 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 the CSV file from your hard drive select ‘From Computer‘ …

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

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

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 your 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 right data), and click ‘Next‘ …

Depending on the chart or graph type you’ve selected, the plugin displays various customization settings and options …

Visualizer gives you total control over your chart or graph, and updates your display in real time …

For example, the pie chart offers various configurable options, including:

• 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 are satisfied with the look of your graph or chart, click on the ‘Create Chart’ button …

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

Note that new visual elements are given a unique ID displayed in a shortcode. As you will see shortly, this lets you easily embed charts and graphs into your content …

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

After adding a new graph or chart to the ‘Visualizer Library’, you can edit it, duplicate it, or trash it …

Visualizer Plugin Usage

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

Click on ‘Visualizations‘ …

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

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

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

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

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

As mentioned earlier, the plugin also displays responsive graphs for viewing on mobile devices …

As you can see, Visualizer lets you add and customize dynamic charts and graphs in your content. You can update your data and your changes will automatically be reflected throughout your website. This makes adding interactive graph data in WordPress really easy.

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

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

• WordPress Visualizer – Additional Tutorials

Congratulations! Now you know how to easily add colorful and dynamic charts and graphs to your WordPress posts and pages.

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