How To Add Charts And Graphs To WordPress

You’ve no doubt heard the saying “a picture is worth a thousand words.” This certainly applies when you are presenting or explaining complex information.

Using graphs and charts can help to make technical or statistical data more easily digestible.

You can use tables to present information, but if you want your audience to try and make sense of complex data with numbers, trends or comparisons easily, then graphs and charts are perfect for helping them visualize the data.

Charts and graphs help explain complex information so your audience can more easily interpret it!

Need to add charts or graphs to your WordPress pages? This tutorial shows you how to use WordPress Visualizer – a simple, easy to use and powerful WP plugin that allows you to create, manage and embed stunning and interactive charts and graphs into your WordPress posts and pages that:

• Your web visitors can interact with
• Lets you upload chart or graph data from your hard drive or a web-based source of data
• Is dynamically responsive for mobile devices

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

Use WordPress Chart & Graph Plugins

If you want to easily create interactive bar charts and graphs in your WordPress pages and posts with no coding skills required, the easiest way to do this is to use a plugin.

Fortunately, there is a free plugin for WordPress that is simple to install, easy-to-use and allows you to not only create appealing and mobile-responsive graphs and charts, it also lets you populate your charts and graphs with updateable data.

WP Plugin: Visualizer

Visualizer Plugin URL

You can install the plugin in your WordPress dashboard (see further below), or download WordPress Visualizer here:

http://wordpress.org/plugins/visualizer

Visualizer Plugin Description

Visualizer is an easy-to-use and powerful WordPress plugin that lets you create, manage and embed eye-catching graphs into your WordPress posts and pages with a few simple steps.

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 are required.

WordPress Visualizer also comes with a variety of charts optimized for 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 your site’s design. Several options are available for each chart that let you fully 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 devices without requiring the installation of extra plugins.

How To Install WP Visualizer

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

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

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

Click OK to proceed …

Activate the plugin after successfully installing it …

You can also activate the plugin in the Plugins area …

After your plugin has been activated, click on Library …

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

This brings up the plugin’s Visualizer Library options …

After installing the plugin, this section will be empty.

The next step is to add the charts and graphs to your library that you will want to display in your pages or posts.

How To Configure Visualizer

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

You will be presented with all the kinds of charts available.

Select the type of chart or graph 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 your data …

When creating your CSV data file, ensure that:

• Your first row includes the column headings.
• The second row contains the series type (e.g. string, timeofday, etc.)

The screenshot below shows how to format your data correctly …

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

Once you have done this, 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 hard drive select ‘From Computer‘ …

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

The plugin will import your data from the CSV file 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, 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 containing the right data), and then click ‘Next‘ …

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

Visualizer gives you complete control of your information, and updates your display in real time …

For example, the pie chart offers various configurable options, including:

• 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 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’re satisfied with the look of your chart or graph, click on the ‘Create Chart’ button …

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

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

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

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

Visualizer Plugin Usage

After creating a new element and adding it to the Library, it’s easy to insert it into a page or post.

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 the ‘Add Media‘ button …

Click on ‘Visualizations‘ …

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

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

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

Once your post has been updated, click ‘View post’ to see the results …

You will see the visual element in the location you specified …

As mentioned previously, the plugin also displays responsive visual elements for viewing on mobile devices …

As you can see, the Visualizer plugin allows you to insert and customize dynamic charts and graphs in your content. You can modify your data and your changes will automatically be reflected wherever you have inserted your charts, graphs, comparison bars , etc. in your website. This makes working with dynamic graph information in WordPress very easy.

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

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 easily create appealing and interactive pie charts and graphs in WordPress.

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