How To Add Charts And Graphs To WordPress

No doubt you’re familiar with the old adage “a picture is worth a thousand words.” This certainly applies when you are presenting and explaining data.

Charts and graphs are a great way to break up content with loads of text, and make technical or statistical data more easily digestible.

You can present data with tables, but if you want people to try and interpret complex information with figures, percentages and comparisons quickly, then charts and graphs are perfect for helping them understand the data.

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

If you want to learn how to display dynamic visual content on your WordPress site like graphs and charts, this step-by-step tutorial will show you exactly how to create appealing and interactive graphs and charts to WordPress that:

• Your web visitors can engage with
• Lets you upload data from your computer or an online data source
• Dynamically resizes for mobile device browsing

If you plan to display visual data like bar charts, comparison bars or trending graphs containing static information (e.g. historical data), an easier way to present this information is to create the graphs or charts using a desktop application, convert these into jpg or png files and then simply add your image files to your post or page.

Use WordPress Chart & Graph Plugins

If you want to easily add dynamic bars and graphs to WordPress with no coding skills required, the easiest way to do this is to use a plugin.

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

WordPress Plugin: Visualizer

Plugin URL

You can install the plugin in your WordPress dashboard (we show you how to do this a little further below), or download WordPress Visualizer here:

http://wordpress.org/plugins/visualizer

Visualizer Description

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

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 additional plugins or add-ons are required.

Visualizer 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 web design. A number of options are available for each chart that let you fully 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 web visitors can see your charts and graphs on their mobile devices without requiring the installation of any additional software.

How To Install The Visualizer Plugin

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

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

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

Click OK to go ahead …

Activate the plugin …

You can also activate the plugin in the Plugins section …

Once your plugin has been activated, click on Library …

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

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

When you first install the plugin, this section will be empty.

The next step is to add the charts and graphs to your library that you plan to display in your posts and pages.

Plugin Configuration

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

An image gallery displaying all of the default 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 graph/chart type will open up in a lightbox.

The next step is to upload a CSV file that contains all the data you would like to populate your chart or graph with …

When creating your CSV data file, ensure that:

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

The screenshot below shows how to format your data as per the above requirements …

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

Next, 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 from your computer select ‘From Computer‘ …

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

The plugin imports the data and displays it using the graph/chart type chosen …

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

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

The WordPress Visualizer plugin gives you full control of your information, 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’re happy with the look of your chart or graph, click Create Chart …

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

Note that each element is given a unique ID displayed as a shortcode. As you will see very soon, this lets you embed charts and graphs into your WordPress posts and pages very quickly …

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

After a graph or chart has been added to the ‘Visualizer Library’, you can edit its details, duplicate it, or delete it …

Visualizer Usage

After creating a new chart or graph and adding it to Visualizer, adding it to a post or page is quite 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 to be added to your content and click the “insert” icon …

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

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

After the post has been published, click ‘View post’ to see the results …

The chart or graph will show in the location where you placed the shortcode …

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

As you can see, the Visualizer plugin lets you add and customize dynamic charts and graphs in your content. You can modify your data and the changes will automatically be reflected wherever you have inserted your charts, graphs, comparison bars , etc. in your website. This is a real time-saving feature of the plugin if you’re adding dynamic graph data in WordPress.

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

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 insert stunning pie charts and graphs into your WordPress pages and posts.

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