How To Add Charts And Graphs To WordPress

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

Using charts and graphs is great for making technical or statistical data more easily digestible.

You can use tables to present data, but if you want your audience to try and interpret complex data with numbers, trends or relationships more easily, then charts and graphs allow you to present the data in a meaningful and intelligent way that can be easily processed.

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

Need to add charts and graphs to your WordPress pages and posts? This tutorial shows you how to use WP Visualizer – a simple, easy to use and powerful tool that lets you create, manage and embed colorful and interactive charts into your WordPress posts and pages in a few simple steps that:

• Your web visitors can interact with
• Lets you upload graph or chart data from your hard drive or an online data source
• Resizes dynamically for mobile device screens

If you plan to display visual data like bar charts, comparison data or trending graphs which contain information that is not going to change (e.g. historical data), an easier way to add your data is to create the graphs or charts using an image editing application, convert these into images and then simply add your image to your posts.

Use WordPress Chart & Graph Plugins

If you want to add dynamic bar charts and pie charts to WordPress 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 beautiful and dynamic charts and graphs, it also lets you populate your charts and graphs with dynamic data.

WordPress Plugin: Visualizer

Visualizer URL

You can install the plugin inside your WordPress dashboard (see a little further down the page), or access and download the WP Visualizer plugin the WordPress plugin directory using the link below:

http://wordpress.org/plugins/visualizer

Plugin Description

The WordPress Visualizer plugin is a simple, easy to use and powerful tool that allows you to create, manage and embed colorful and interactive charts and graphs into your WordPress posts and pages in 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 plugins are required.

Visualizer also provides a variety of built-in optimized for 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 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 web design. Various options are available for each chart that let you 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 device browsers without requiring the installation of extra plugins.

Plugin Installation

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

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

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

Click OK to go ahead …

Activate the plugin after installing it …

You can also activate the plugin in the Plugins section …

After your plugin has been activated, click on Library …

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

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

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

Your next step is to add add charts and graphs to the plugin library.

How To Configure Visualizer

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

A visual gallery displaying all of the kinds of graphs available will load on your screen.

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

Your graph/chart type will pop up in a lightbox.

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

When creating your CSV data file, make sure that:

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

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

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

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

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

The plugin imports your data and displays 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 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 right data), and click ‘Next‘ …

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

Visualizer gives you total 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 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 are happy with the way your graph or chart appears, click on the ‘Create Chart’ button …

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

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

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

After adding a chart or graph to the ‘Visualizer Library’, you can edit its details, duplicate it, or trash it …

Visualizer Usage

Once you have created a chart or graph and added it to the Visualizer Library, it’s simple to add it to a 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 element to be added to your content and click the “insert” icon …

This inserts a shortcode into your content …

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

After publishing the page, click ‘View post’ to see it …

You will see your chart in the content …

As mentioned previously, Visualizer also displays responsive charts for viewing on mobile devices …

As you can see, Visualizer lets you add and customize dynamic charts and graphs in your content. You can update your data and your changes will automatically be reflected wherever you have inserted your charts, graphs, comparison bars , etc. in your site. This makes managing dynamic graph data in WordPress very easy.

The developers of this plugin have created a number of step-by-step 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, go to the site below:

• WordPress Visualizer – Additional Tutorials

Congratulations! Now you know how to easily insert dynamic bar charts and graphs into WordPress.

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