How To Add Charts And Graphs To WordPress

No doubt you’re familiar with the old adage “a picture is worth a thousand words.” This is certainly true when you are presenting and explaining complex information.

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

You can use tables to present data, but if you want people to try and interpret complex data with numbers, trends or comparisons more easily, then charts and graphs allow you to present your information in an intelligent and meaningful way that can be easily understood.

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

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

• Your web visitors can engage with
• Lets you upload chart or graph data from your hard drive or a web-based data source
• Resizes dynamically for mobile device screens

If you are displaying visual data like bar charts, comparison data or trending graphs that contain static information (e.g. historical data), a simple method you can use is to create your graphs or charts using a desktop application, convert these into images and then simply insert the images into your posts or pages.

Use WordPress Chart & Graph Plugins

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

Fortunately, there is a plugin for WordPress sites that is simple to install, easy-to-use and allows you to not only create attractive and dynamic graphs and charts, it also lets you populate your charts and graphs with updateable information.

WordPress Plugin: Visualizer

Plugin URL

You can install the plugin from your WordPress dashboard (we show you how to do this further down the page), or access and download the Visualizer plugin here:

http://wordpress.org/plugins/visualizer

Visualizer Plugin Description

Visualizer is an easy-to-use and powerful plugin for WordPress that allows you to create, manage and embed appealing and interactive 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 addons are needed.

Visualizer also provides 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 a flexible and customizable plugin, allowing you to use Google Chart Tools with their default setting, or configure an extensive set of options to match your web design. A number of options are available for each chart that let you fully 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 visitors can see your charts and graphs on their mobile devices without requiring the installation of additional software.

Plugin Installation

Inside your WordPress administration area, select Plugins > Add New from the main sidebar menu …

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

Locate the item in the search results section 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 area …

Once the plugin has been activated, click on Library …

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

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

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

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

Visualizer Plugin Configuration

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

A visual gallery displaying all of the kinds of graphs and charts available will load 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 new window.

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

When creating your CSV data file, ensure that:

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

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

If you are not sure how to format your data CSV, just study the sample CSV file provided with the plugin.

Once you have completed this step, select the 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 computer select ‘From Computer‘ …

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

The plugin will now import your data and display 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, 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 data file containing the correct data), and click ‘Next‘ …

Depending on the chart or graph type you have chosen, the plugin will display various customization options …

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

For example, the pie chart offers many 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 a 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 how your chart or graph looks, click on the ‘Create Chart’ button …

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

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

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

After adding an item to the ‘Visualizer Library’, you can edit its details, clone it, or delete it …

Plugin Usage

After creating a new chart or graph and adding it to the Visualizer Library, it’s really very simple to add it to posts or pages.

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 to be inserted into your content and click on the “insert” icon …

This inserts a shortcode into your content …

After you have added the shortcode, click on Publish to publish (or update) your content …

After publishing your post, click ‘View post’ to see the end result …

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

As mentioned earlier, Visualizer also displays responsive elements for mobile device screens …

As you can see, WordPress 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 chart information in WordPress really easy.

The developers of this plugin have created a number of step-by-step tutorials you can refer to for ways to edit, customize and use the Visualizer plugin for WordPress.

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

• WordPress Visualizer – Additional Tutorials

Congratulations! Now you know how to insert beautiful bar charts and graphs into your WordPress posts.

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