How To Add Charts And Graphs To WordPress

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

Charts and graphs can help to break up technical and difficult content, and make statistical data and information more easily digestible.

You can use tables to present information, but if you want people to try and make sense of complex information with numbers, percentages or comparisons easily, then charts and graphs let you present the information in an intelligent and meaningful manner that can be quickly understood.

Graphs and charts help present complex information so people can more easily understand it!

If you want to learn how to present information visually and dynamically on your WordPress site using graphs and charts, this step-by-step tutorial will show you how to create and add eye-catching and updatable charts to your WP posts that:

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

If you plan to display visual data like pie charts, comparison bars or trending graphs that contain 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 add the images to your pages.

Use WordPress Chart & Graph Plugins

If you want to easily create interactive bar charts and graphs in 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 sites that is simple to install, easy-to-use and allows you to not only create colorful and dynamic graphs and charts, it also lets you populate your charts and graphs with updatable data.

Visualizer

Visualizer Plugin URL

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

http://wordpress.org/plugins/visualizer

Visualizer Plugin Description

WordPress Visualizer is a simple, easy to use and powerful tool that lets you create, manage and embed stunning graphs into your WordPress posts and pages with just a few mouse clicks.

The plugin 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.

WordPress Visualizer also provides a variety of built-in optimized for 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 the look and feel of your website. Various options are available for each chart that allow you to 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 site visitors can see your charts and graphs on their mobile browsers without having to install any additional software.

Plugin Installation

From your WP dashboard, select Plugins > Add New from the main admin menu …

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

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

Click OK to go ahead …

Activate the plugin …

You can also activate the plugin in the Plugins page …

Once your plugin has been activated, click on Library …

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

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

When you first install the plugin, the library contains no charts.

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

How To Configure The Plugin

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

An image gallery displaying all of the built-in kinds of graphs 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 …

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

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

When creating your CSV data file, make sure that:

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

The screenshot below shows how to format your data correctly …

If you are not sure how to format your CSV file, simply refer to the sample spreadsheet supplied 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 your CSV file and data from your computer select ‘From Computer‘ …

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

The plugin will import your data and display 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, see the article below:

• How To Populate Data Using Google Spreadsheet

After importing your data, check that all of your information is correct (if not, click on the ‘Back’ button and reupload a new data file with the correct data), and then click ‘Next‘ …

Depending on the chart or graph type you’ve chosen, the plugin will display a number of customization options and settings …

The WordPress Visualizer plugin gives you total control of your chart or graph, 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 are satisfied with the look of your graph or chart, click Create Chart …

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

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

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

After adding a new item to the ‘Visualizer Library’, you can edit its details, clone it, or trash it …

Visualizer Plugin Usage

After creating a new chart or graph and adding it to Visualizer, it’s really simple to insert it into your pages or posts.

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‘ …

Select the chart or graph you want to insert into your content and click the “insert” icon …

This inserts a shortcode into your content …

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

After the page has been updated, click ‘View post’ to see it …

You will see the item in the content …

As mentioned previously, Visualizer also displays responsive charts and graphs for mobile device viewing …

As you can see, WordPress Visualizer allows you to add and customize dynamic charts and graphs in your content. You can change your data and the changes will automatically be reflected wherever you have inserted your charts, graphs, comparison bars , etc. in your website. This makes managing dynamic graph information in WordPress really efficient.

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

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

• WordPress Visualizer – Additional Tutorials

Congratulations! Now you know how to easily add beautiful and interactive pie charts and graphs to your WordPress posts and pages.

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