How To Add Charts And Graphs To WordPress

You’ve no doubt heard the old saying “a picture is worth a thousand words.” This certainly applies when you’re presenting and explaining complex data.

Using charts and graphs can help to make technical data simpler and easier to grasp.

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

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

If you want to learn how to present dynamic visual content on your WordPress site using graphs and charts, this step-by-step tutorial will show you exactly how to create colourful and updatable charts to WordPress that:

• Your web visitors can interact with
• Allows you to add data from your hard drive or a web-based source of data
• Resizes dynamically for mobile screens

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

Use WordPress Chart & Graph Plugins

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

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

Visualizer Plugin For WordPress

Visualizer Plugin URL

You can install the plugin in your WordPress dashboard (we show you how to do this further down the page), or access and download WordPress Visualizer from the link below:

http://wordpress.org/plugins/visualizer

Visualizer Plugin Description

WP Visualizer is an easy-to-use and powerful plugin that lets you create, manage and embed dynamic charts and graphs into your WordPress posts and pages with just 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 addons are needed.

WordPress Visualizer also provides 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

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 the look and feel of your website. A number of 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 device browsers without requiring the installation of additional software.

Plugin Installation

From your WP dashboard, select Plugins > Add New from the navigation sidebar menu …

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

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

Click OK to continue …

Activate the plugin after installation is successful …

You can also activate the plugin in the Plugins area …

After your plugin has been activated, click on Library …

You can also get to the plugin’s ‘library’ screen by selecting Media > Visualizer Library from your main 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 the charts and graphs to your library that you plan to publish to your content.

How To Configure The Visualizer Plugin

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

A gallery displaying all of the default types of graphs and charts available will come up on your screen.

Select the type of chart or graph 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 that contains your data …

When creating your CSV data file, ensure that:

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

The screenshot below shows how to format your data …

If you are unsure about how to format your data CSV, simply refer to the sample spreadsheet provided with the plugin.

Once you have done this, select your 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‘ …

Locate and select your data 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

For a tutorial that explains 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 the data, check that all of your information is correct (if not, click on the ‘Back’ button and reupload a new data file with the correct data), and then click ‘Next‘ …

Depending on the chart or graph type you’ve picked, the plugin displays a range of customization options …

The WordPress Visualizer plugin gives you complete control over 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 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 how your chart or graph is looking, click Create Chart …

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

Note that new elements are given a unique ID displayed as a shortcode. As you will see shortly, this allows you to embed graphs and charts into your pages easily and quickly …

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

After adding an element to the ‘Visualizer Library’, you can edit it, clone it, or delete it …

Visualizer Plugin Usage

After you’ve created a element and added it to the Visualizer Library, 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 element you want to add to your content and click on the “insert” icon …

This adds a shortcode for the element into your content …

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

Once your page has been published, click ‘View post’ to see the results …

Your chart or graph will show up in the content …

As mentioned previously, the plugin also displays responsive charts and graphs for mobile devices …

As you can see, 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 throughout your website. This is very convenient if you’re managing interactive graph data in WordPress.

The developers of this plugin have created a number of step-by-step tutorials you can refer to for ways to edit, customize and use WordPress Visualizer.

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

• WordPress Visualizer – Additional Tutorials

Congratulations! Now you know how to create eye-catching and interactive charts and graphs in WordPress.

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