How To Add Charts And Graphs To WordPress

You’ve heard the adage “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 breaking up technical and difficult content, and making statistical data more easily digestible.

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

Graphs and charts help explain complex data so people can more easily interpret it!

Need to add charts and graphs to WordPress? This step-by-step tutorial shows you how to use WordPress Visualizer – a simple, easy to use and powerful tool that allows you to create, manage and insert attractive and dynamic graphs and charts into your WordPress posts and pages that:

• Your visitors can interact with
• Lets you add graph or chart data from your computer or an online source of data
• Dynamically resizes for viewing on mobile devices

If you plan to display visual data like pie charts, comparison data or trending graphs which contain information that is not going to change (e.g. historical data), a simple method you can use to present this data is to create your charts or graphs using an image editing application, convert these into images and then simply add your files and an image to your content.

Use WordPress Chart & Graph Plugins

If you want to easily embed dynamic bar charts and graphs into WordPress pages and posts 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 that is simple to install, easy-to-use and allows you to not only create great-looking and mobile-responsive graphs and charts, it also lets you populate your charts and graphs with updateable data.

Visualizer Plugin For WordPress

Plugin URL

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

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 great-looking and dynamic 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 needed.

WordPress Visualizer also contains a variety of built-in 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

Visualizer is a flexible and customizable plugin, 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 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 web browsers without having to install extra software.

How To Install Visualizer

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

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

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

Click OK to continue …

Activate the plugin after successfully installing it …

You can also activate the plugin in the Plugins section …

After the 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 page …

After installing the plugin, the library will contain no charts.

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

How To Configure The Visualizer Plugin

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

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

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

The graph/chart type will open up in a new window.

The next step is to upload a CSV file with your data …

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. string, date, etc.)

The screenshot below shows how to format your data correctly …

If you are not sure how to format your CSV file, simply study the sample file supplied with the plugin.

Once you have created your CSV file, 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 from your hard drive select ‘From Computer‘ …

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

The plugin imports the data and displays it using the graph/chart type you have 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, see the article below:

• How To Populate Data Using Google Spreadsheet

After importing the data, make sure that all of your information is correct (if not, click on the ‘Back’ button and reupload a data file with the right data), and then click ‘Next‘ …

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

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

For example, the pie chart offers many configurable options, such as:

• 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 way your chart or graph is looking, click on the ‘Create Chart’ button …

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

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

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

After a chart or graph has been added to the ‘Visualizer Library’, you can edit it, clone it, or trash it …

Plugin Usage

Once you have created a new graph or chart and added it to Visualizer, adding it to pages or posts is really 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 your content and click on Add Media …

Click on ‘Visualizations‘ …

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

This inserts a shortcode into your content …

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

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

You will see the item in your content …

As mentioned earlier, the plugin also displays responsive graphs and charts for mobile users …

As you can see, the Visualizer plugin allows you to add 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 chart information in WordPress.

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

For additional 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 add appealing and dynamic bar charts and graphs to WordPress.

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