How To Add Charts And Graphs To WordPress

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

Using charts and graphs is great for breaking up long text passages, and making technical or statistical data a whole lot easier to grasp.

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

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

If you want to present information visually and dynamically on your WordPress site like charts and graphs, this step-by-step tutorial will show you exactly how to create and add colourful and updateable charts and graphs to your WP posts that:

• Your visitors can engage with
• Lets you upload graph or chart data from your hard drive or an online data source
• Is responsive for mobile browsers

If you are displaying visual data like pie charts, comparison bars or trending graphs containing information that is not going to change (e.g. historical data), an easier way to add the information is to create your graphs or charts using an image editing application, convert these into images and then simply insert your image files into your posts.

Use WordPress Chart & Graph Plugins

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

Fortunately, there is a plugin for WordPress users 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 information.

Visualizer Plugin For WordPress

Visualizer Plugin URL

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

http://wordpress.org/plugins/visualizer

Plugin Description

WordPress Visualizer is a simple, easy to use and powerful tool that allows you to create, manage and embed colorful graphs into your WordPress posts and pages with 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 are required.

Visualizer also comes with 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

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 allow you to further 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 blog or site visitors can see your charts and graphs on their mobile web browsers without requiring the installation of extra plugins.

How To Install WP Visualizer

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

In the Add Plugins page type search for “visualizer” and hit enter …

Locate the plugin in the search results area and click Install Now …

Click OK to go ahead …

Activate the plugin …

You can also activate the plugin in the Plugins section …

Once your plugin has been activated, click on Library …

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

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

When you first install the plugin, the library section will be empty.

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

How To Configure Visualizer

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

An image gallery displaying all the different types of charts and graphs available will load on your screen.

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 your data …

When creating your CSV data file, make sure that:

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

The screenshot below shows how to format your data as explained above …

If you are unsure about how to format your CSV file, just use the sample CSV file that comes with the plugin.

Next, select the data source (‘From Computer’ or ‘From Web’) in the ‘Upload CSV File’ section.

Upload CSV File From Computer

To upload the CSV file from your computer select ‘From Computer‘ …

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

The plugin will import the data and display it using the graph/chart type you have 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 the data, check that all of your information is correct (if not, click on the ‘Back’ button and reupload a new data file containing the correct data), and click ‘Next‘ …

Depending on the chart or graph type you have selected, the plugin displays a range of customization settings and options …

The WordPress Visualizer plugin gives you full control of your information, 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 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 satisfied with the way your graph or chart appears, click Create Chart …

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

Note that new visual elements are given a unique ID displayed as a shortcode. As you will see shortly, this lets you embed charts and graphs into your posts very easily …

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

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

Visualizer Plugin Usage

Once you have created a chart or graph and added it to the Library, it’s very easy to insert it into 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 your content and click on Add Media …

Click on ‘Visualizations‘ …

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

This will place a shortcode into your content …

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

Once the post/page has been updated, click ‘View post’ to see the result …

The element will show up in the location you specified …

As mentioned previously, the plugin also displays responsive graphs for mobile viewing …

As you can see, WordPress Visualizer lets you 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 site. This makes adding dynamic chart data in WordPress really easy.

The plugin developers have created a series of tutorials you can refer to 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 site below:

• WordPress Visualizer – Additional Tutorials

Congratulations! Now you know how to easily add great-looking and dynamic charts and graphs to your WordPress content.

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