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 presenting or explaining complex information.

Using graphs and charts is great for breaking up long text passages, and making statistical data more easily digestible.

You can present data with tables, but if you want your audience to try and interpret complex information with figures, trends or relationships quickly, then charts and graphs are perfect for helping them understand the information.

Charts and graphs help explain complex data so people can more easily understand it!

Need to add charts or graphs to WordPress? This tutorial shows you how to use WP Visualizer – a simple, easy to use and powerful tool that lets you create, manage and embed great-looking and dynamic graphs into your WordPress posts and pages with a few mouse clicks that:

• Your site visitors can engage with
• Allows you to upload data from your hard drive or an online source of data
• Is dynamically responsive for mobile viewing

If you plan to display 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 charts or graphs using an image editing application, convert these into images and then simply insert the images into your site content.

Use WordPress Chart & Graph Plugins

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

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

Visualizer

Plugin URL

You can install the plugin inside your WordPress dashboard (explained a little further down the page), or download WP Visualizer here:

http://wordpress.org/plugins/visualizer

Visualizer Plugin Description

The Visualizer plugin is a simple, easy to use and powerful tool that lets you create, manage and insert colorful and dynamic charts 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 extra plugins are needed.

WordPress Visualizer also provides a variety of built-in 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 web design. Various options are available for each chart that let you further customize their look and feel.

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 device browsers without requiring the installation of any extra software.

How To Install Visualizer

Inside your WP dashboard, select Plugins > Add New from the dashboard menu …

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

Locate the entry in the search results screen and click Install Now …

Click OK to proceed …

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 also get to the plugin’s ‘library’ screen by choosing Media > Visualizer Library in the main menu …

This brings up the plugin’s Visualizer Library options …

After installing the plugin, the library contains no charts.

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

Visualizer Configuration

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

A visual gallery displaying all of the built-in types of graphs available will load on your screen.

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

Your selected graph/chart type will pop up in a new window.

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

When creating your CSV data file, make sure that:

• Your first row contains your 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 unsure about how to format your data CSV, just download the sample file supplied 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 your 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 imports your data and displays it using the graph/chart type you have selected …

Upload CSV File From The Web

For a tutorial that shows you 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 data file with the correct data), and click ‘Next‘ …

Depending on the chart or graph type selected, the plugin will display a number of customization settings and options …

The WordPress Visualizer plugin gives you complete control over 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 happy with the look of your chart or graph, click on the ‘Create Chart’ button …

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

Note that new visual elements are given a unique ID displayed in a shortcode. As you will see very soon, this allows you to add charts and graphs to your WordPress pages easily …

Graphs and charts 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, clone it, or trash it …

Plugin Usage

After you’ve created a chart or graph and added it to the Library, it’s very easy to insert it into a page.

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 the ‘Add Media‘ button …

Click on ‘Visualizations‘ …

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

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

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

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

You will see your element in the content …

As mentioned previously, the plugin also displays responsive elements for mobile screens …

As you can see, WordPress Visualizer lets you insert 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 interactive chart information in WordPress really easy.

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

For additional tutorials on editing, copying, deleting and adding data to your charts, go to the site below:

• WordPress Visualizer – Additional Tutorials

Congratulations! Now you know how to easily add beautiful and interactive bar charts and graphs to your WordPress pages and posts.

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