How To Add Charts And Graphs To WordPress

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

Using graphs and charts is a great way to break up long text passages, and make data more easily digestible.

You can present data with tables, but if you want people to try and make sense of complex information with figures, percentages or relationships more easily, then charts and graphs let you present your data in a meaningful and intelligent way that can be easily understood.

Charts and graphs help you present complex data so people can more easily interpret it!

If you want to learn how to display information visually and dynamically on your WordPress site using graphs and charts, this tutorial will show you how to create attractive and updateable graphs and charts to your pages that:

• Your web visitors can engage with
• Lets you upload data from your computer or a web-based data source
• Is fully responsive for mobile screens

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

Use WordPress Chart & Graph Plugins

If you want to easily add dynamic bar charts and pie charts to WordPress pages with no coding skills required, the easiest way to do this is to use a plugin.

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

Visualizer

Visualizer Plugin URL

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

http://wordpress.org/plugins/visualizer

Visualizer Plugin Description

The Visualizer plugin is a simple, easy to use and powerful tool that lets you create, manage and insert eye-catching charts into your WordPress posts and pages in 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 needed.

The plugin 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

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 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 any additional plugins.

How To Install WordPress Visualizer

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

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

Locate Visualizer in the search results section and click Install Now …

Click OK to go ahead …

Activate the plugin after installing it …

You can also activate the plugin in the Plugins area …

Once the plugin has been activated, click on Library …

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

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

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

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

Visualizer Configuration

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

A visual gallery displaying all of the built-in kinds of graphs available will load on your screen.

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

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

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

When creating your CSV data file, make sure that:

• Your first row includes the column headings.
• The second row contains the series type (e.g. number, timeofday, 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 study the sample CSV file 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 the CSV file from your hard drive select ‘From Computer‘ …

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

The plugin imports the data from the CSV file and displays it using the graph/chart type 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, go here:

• How To Populate Data Using Google Spreadsheet

After importing your data, make sure that all of your 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 selected, the plugin will display a range of customization options …

The WordPress Visualizer plugin gives you total control over your information, and updates your display in real time …

For example, the pie chart offers many configurable options, such as:

• 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 happy with the way your chart or graph appears, click on the ‘Create Chart’ button …

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

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

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

After a chart or graph has been added to the ‘Visualizer Library’, you can edit its details, clone it, or trash it …

Visualizer Plugin Usage

After creating a new element and adding it to Visualizer, it’s easy to insert it into your posts and pages.

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 to be added to your content and click the “insert” icon …

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

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

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

Your post or page displays the graph or chart in the location you specified …

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

As you can see, the Visualizer plugin lets you add and customize dynamic charts and graphs in your content. You can update your data and your changes will automatically be reflected wherever you have inserted your charts, graphs, comparison bars , etc. in your website. This is very convenient if you’re managing dynamic chart information in WordPress.

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

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

• WordPress Visualizer – Additional Tutorials

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

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