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 are presenting or explaining data.

Charts and graphs are a great way to make technical or statistical data more easily digestible.

You can present information with tables, but if you want people to try and interpret complex data with numbers, trends and comparisons quickly, then charts and graphs let you present your information in an intelligent and meaningful way that can be easily understood.

Graphs and charts help present complex information so people can more easily understand it!

Need to add charts or graphs to your WordPress posts? This step-by-step tutorial shows you how to use the WordPress Visualizer plugin – a simple, easy to use and powerful tool that lets you create, manage and insert colorful and mobile-responsive charts and graphs into your WordPress posts and pages in just a few simple steps that:

• Your site visitors can engage with
• Allows you to upload data from your hard drive or a web-based source of data
• Is dynamically responsive for mobile browsers

If you plan to display visual data like bar charts, comparison data or trending graphs that contain static information (e.g. historical data), an easier option is to create your charts or graphs using a desktop application, convert these into jpg or png images and then simply add the images to your content.

Use WordPress Chart & Graph Plugins

If you want to easily create dynamic bar charts and graphs in your WordPress posts with no coding skills required, the easiest way to do this is to use a plugin.

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

WP Plugin: Visualizer

Plugin URL

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

http://wordpress.org/plugins/visualizer

Visualizer Plugin Description

Visualizer is an easy-to-use and powerful WordPress plugin that lets you create, manage and insert great-looking and interactive charts and graphs into your WordPress posts and pages with just a few simple steps.

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 or add-ons are needed.

The plugin also contains a variety of built-in that are optimized to address 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. Various options are available for each chart that let you 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 having to install any additional plugins.

Plugin Installation

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

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

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

Click OK to continue …

Activate the plugin …

You can also activate the plugin in the Plugins area …

Once 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 admin menu …

This brings up the plugin’s Visualizer Library page …

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

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

Visualizer Plugin Configuration

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

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

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

The selected graph/chart type will pop up in a lightbox.

The next step is to upload a CSV file with 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. string, date, etc.)

The screenshot below shows how to format your data …

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

Next, 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 and data from your computer select ‘From Computer‘ …

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

The plugin will import your data from the CSV file and display it using the graph/chart type chosen …

Upload CSV File From The Web

For a step-by-step 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 right data), and click ‘Next‘ …

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

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

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

Note that every visual element is given a unique ID displayed in a shortcode. As you will see very soon, this lets you add charts and graphs to your WordPress pages and posts easily and quickly …

Graphs and charts added to the Visualizer Library can easily be accessed by type …

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

Visualizer Plugin Usage

After creating a new graph or chart and adding it to the Visualizer Library, it’s easy to insert it into your content.

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 the ‘Add Media‘ button …

Click on ‘Visualizations‘ …

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

This inserts a shortcode for the element into your content …

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

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

Your post or page should display the graph in the location where you’ve added the shortcode …

As mentioned previously, Visualizer also displays responsive charts for mobile users …

As you can see, WordPress Visualizer lets you insert and customize dynamic charts and graphs in your content. You can edit your data and the changes will automatically be reflected wherever you have inserted your charts, graphs, comparison bars , etc. in your website. This is very convenient if you’re working with dynamic graph information in WordPress.

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 the Visualizer plugin.

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

• WordPress Visualizer – Additional Tutorials

Congratulations! Now you know how to insert great-looking bar charts and graphs into your WordPress posts with WordPress Visualizer plugin.

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