How To Add Charts And Graphs To WordPress

You’re probably familiar with the adage “a picture is worth a thousand words.” This certainly applies when you are trying to present and explain data.

Using graphs and charts is great for breaking up content containing too much text, and making statistical data a whole lot easier to understand.

You can present information using tables, but if you want people to try and make sense of complex data with numbers, trends or relationships quickly, then graphs and charts allow you to present your information in an intelligent and meaningful manner that can be quickly and easily understood.

Charts and graphs help present complex data so your audience can more easily interpret it!

Need to add charts and graphs to your WordPress content? This tutorial shows you how to use WordPress Visualizer – an easy-to-use and powerful plugin that lets you create, manage and embed colorful and interactive charts into your WordPress posts and pages that:

• Your site visitors can engage with
• Lets you add graph or chart data from your computer or an online source of data
• Will dynamically resize for mobile screens

If you plan to display visual data like bar charts, comparison graphs or trending graphs containing static information (e.g. historical data), a simple method you can use to present this information is to create the charts or graphs using an image editing application, convert these into images and then simply add your files and an image to your post or page.

Use WordPress Chart & Graph Plugins

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

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

Visualizer Plugin For WordPress

Plugin URL

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

http://wordpress.org/plugins/visualizer

Visualizer Description

Visualizer is a simple, easy to use and powerful tool that lets you create, manage and embed eye-catching and dynamic graphs and charts into your WordPress posts and pages with just 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 contains a variety of charts that are optimized to address all 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. A number of options are available for each chart that allow you to 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 web visitors can see your charts and graphs on their mobile device browsers without having to install any additional plugins.

Plugin Installation

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

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

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

Click OK to go ahead …

Activate the plugin …

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 selecting Media > Visualizer Library in the dashboard menu …

This brings up the plugin’s Visualizer Library settings page …

After installing the plugin, the library contains no charts.

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

Plugin Configuration

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

A page will load on your screen displaying all of the default types of graphs available.

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

The graph/chart type will open up in a lightbox.

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

When creating your CSV data file, make sure that:

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

The screenshot below shows how to format your data correctly …

If you are unsure about how to format your data CSV, just study the sample file provided with the plugin.

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

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

The plugin will import the data from the CSV file 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 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 picked, the plugin displays various customization settings and options …

The plugin gives you total control over your chart or graph, and updates your display in real time …

For example, the pie chart offers many 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 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 satisfied with the look of your chart or graph, click Create Chart …

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

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

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

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

Visualizer Plugin Usage

Once you’ve created a new graph or chart and added it to the Visualizer Library, adding it to a page or post is really very simple.

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 Add Media …

Click on ‘Visualizations‘ …

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

This inserts a shortcode for the element into your content …

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

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

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

As mentioned earlier, the plugin also displays responsive charts for mobile device viewing …

As you can see, WordPress Visualizer allows you to insert and customize dynamic charts and graphs in your content. You can edit your data and your changes will automatically be reflected throughout your site. This is great if you’re working with interactive graph information in WordPress.

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

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

• WordPress Visualizer – Additional Tutorials

Congratulations! Now you know how to easily create stunning and mobile-responsive bar charts and graphs in WordPress.

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