How To Add Charts And Graphs To WordPress

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

Using charts and graphs is a great way to break up technical or difficult information, and make technical data a whole lot simpler to understand.

You can present information with tables, but if you want your audience to try and interpret complex data with numbers, trends and comparisons easily, then graphs and charts let you present your information in a meaningful and intelligent manner that can be quickly and easily understood.

Graphs and charts help you explain complex information so people can more easily interpret 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 insert great-looking and interactive graphs and charts into your WordPress posts and pages that:

• Your web visitors can interact with
• Lets you add graph or chart data from your hard drive or a web-based data source
• Will dynamically resize for mobile users

If you are displaying visual data like bar charts, comparison bars or trending graphs that contain static information (e.g. historical data), an easier way to present your data is to create the graphs or charts using a desktop application, convert these into images and then simply add the image to your content.

Use WordPress Chart & Graph Plugins

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

Fortunately, there is a WordPress plugin 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 updatable information.

Visualizer – WordPress Plugin

Visualizer Plugin URL

You can install the plugin inside your WP dashboard (explained further down the page), or download Visualizer from the link below:

http://wordpress.org/plugins/visualizer

Plugin Description

WordPress Visualizer is a simple, easy to use and powerful tool that lets you create, manage and insert appealing charts and 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 extra add-ons are required.

WordPress 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 web design. Several 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 web browsers without having to install any extra software.

How To Install Visualizer

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

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

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

Click OK to go ahead …

Activate the plugin …

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 admin menu …

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

After installing the plugin, this section will be empty.

The next step is to add the charts and graphs to your library that you plan to insert into your content.

Plugin Configuration

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

You will see all the different types of graphs available.

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 new window.

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

When creating your CSV data file, ensure that:

• The first row contains your column headings.
• The second row includes the series type (e.g. boolean, date, etc.)

The screenshot below shows how to format your data correctly …

If you are not sure how to format your data CSV, simply download the sample spreadsheet that comes with the plugin.

Next, 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‘ …

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

The plugin imports your data and displays 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, go here:

• How To Populate Data Using Google Spreadsheet

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

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

Visualizer 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 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 how your graph or chart looks, click Create Chart …

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

Note that each visual element is given a unique ID displayed in a shortcode. As you will see shortly, this lets you add charts and graphs to your posts quickly and easily …

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

After a new item has been added to the ‘Visualizer Library’, you can edit it, clone it, or delete it …

Visualizer Plugin Usage

Once you’ve created a new graph or chart and added it to the Visualizer Library, it’s easy to add it to a post or page.

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 the content and click on the ‘Add Media‘ button …

Click on ‘Visualizations‘ …

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

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

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

After updating your post/page, click ‘View post’ to see the results …

Your page or post will display your graph or chart in your content …

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

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 site. This makes managing dynamic chart data in WordPress very easy.

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

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

• WordPress Visualizer – Additional Tutorials

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

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