How To Add Charts And Graphs To WordPress

You’ve heard the old saying “a picture is worth a thousand words.” This certainly applies when you are presenting and explaining complex information.

Using graphs and charts is useful for making technical or statistical data a whole lot easier to grasp.

You can use tables to present data, but if you want your audience to try and make sense of complex information with numbers, percentages or comparisons more easily, then charts and graphs allow you to present the data in a meaningful and intelligent way that can be quickly and easily processed.

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

If you need to learn how to present information visually and dynamically on your WordPress site like charts and graphs, this step-by-step tutorial will show you how to create and add attractive and updateable charts and graphs to your pages that:

• Your web visitors can interact with
• Allows you to upload graph or chart data from your hard drive or an online source of data
• Dynamically resizes for mobile devices

If you plan to display visual data like pie charts, comparison bars or trending graphs which contain information that is not going to change (e.g. historical data), a simple method you can use to add your data is to create the graphs or charts using a desktop application, convert these into images and then simply insert your image into your pages.

Use WordPress Chart & Graph Plugins

If you want to add interactive bars and pie graphs to your WordPress pages with no coding skills required, the easiest way to do this is to use a plugin.

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

Visualizer Plugin For WordPress

Visualizer URL

You can install the plugin from your WordPress dashboard (explained further below), or access and download Visualizer here:

http://wordpress.org/plugins/visualizer

Plugin Description

WordPress Visualizer is an easy-to-use and powerful plugin that allows you to create, manage and embed attractive and mobile-responsive graphs into your WordPress posts and pages with a few mouse clicks.

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 plugins or add-ons are required.

Visualizer also comes with a variety of built-in 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 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 further customize their settings.

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 requiring the installation of extra software.

How To Install The Visualizer Plugin

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

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

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

Click OK to go ahead …

Activate the plugin after installing it …

You can also activate the plugin in the Plugins page …

After your plugin has been activated, click on Library …

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

This brings up the plugin’s Visualizer Library screen …

When you first install the plugin, this section will be empty.

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

Visualizer Configuration

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

An image gallery displaying all the kinds of graphs and charts available will come up on your screen.

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

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

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

When creating your CSV data file, make sure that:

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

The screenshot below shows how to format your data correctly …

If you are not sure how to format your CSV file, simply download the sample provided with the plugin.

Once you have completed this step, select your data source (‘From Computer’ or ‘From Web’) in the ‘Upload CSV File’ section.

Upload CSV File From Computer

To upload a CSV file and data from your hard drive select ‘From Computer‘ …

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

The plugin will import the data and display it using the graph/chart type 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 your data, check that all of the information is correct (if not, click on the ‘Back’ button and reupload a new data file containing the correct data), and click ‘Next‘ …

Depending on the chart or graph type selected, the plugin will display a range of customization settings and options …

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

For example, the pie chart offers various 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 happy with how your chart or graph looks, click Create Chart …

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

Note that new visual elements are given a unique ID displayed as a shortcode. As you will see very soon, this allows you to embed graphs and charts into your content easily …

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

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

Visualizer Plugin Usage

After you’ve created a chart or graph and added it to the Visualizer Library, adding it to pages or posts is really very 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 your content and click on Add Media …

Click on ‘Visualizations‘ …

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

This will add a shortcode into your content …

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

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

Your page or post displays your visual element in where you placed the shortcode …

As mentioned earlier, the plugin also displays responsive graphs and charts for mobile browsing …

As you can see, Visualizer allows you to insert and customize dynamic charts and graphs in your content. You can change your data and the changes will automatically be reflected throughout your website. This makes adding interactive graph information in WordPress very efficient.

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

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

• WordPress Visualizer – Additional Tutorials

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

***

***