How To Add Charts And Graphs To WordPress

You’ve heard the adage “a picture is worth a thousand words.” This certainly applies when you’re trying to present or explain data.

Using graphs and charts is a great way to break up long text passages, and make technical or statistical data easier to understand.

You can use tables to present data, but if you want your audience to try and make sense of complex data with numbers, trends and comparisons easily, then charts and graphs are perfect for helping them understand the information.

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

If you need to present information visually and dynamically on your WordPress site like graphs and charts, this tutorial will show you how to create and add colourful and updatable charts and graphs to your pages that:

• Your visitors can engage with
• Allows you to upload graph or chart data from your computer or an online data source
• Is fully responsive for mobile browsing

If you plan to display visual data like bar charts, comparison bars or trending graphs containing information that is not going to change (e.g. historical data), a simple method you can use is to create the graphs or charts using an image editing application, convert these into jpg and png images and then simply insert the image files into your post or page.

Use WordPress Chart & Graph Plugins

If you want to add dynamic bar charts and pie charts 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 attractive and interactive graphs and charts, it also lets you populate your charts and graphs with updateable content.

Visualizer

Visualizer Plugin URL

You can install the plugin inside your WordPress dashboard (explained a little further down the page), or download WordPress 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 eye-catching and mobile-responsive graphs and charts into your WordPress posts and pages in 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 or add-ons are needed.

The plugin also provides a variety of charts optimized for all your data visualization needs, including:

• Line chart
• Area chart
• Bar chart
• Column chart
• Pie chart
• Geo chart
• Gauge chart
• Candlestick chart
• Scatter chart

WordPress Visualizer 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. Several 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 blog or site visitors can see your charts and graphs on their mobile web browsers without requiring the installation of extra software.

How To Install WordPress Visualizer

From your WordPress admin area, select Plugins > Add New from the main admin menu …

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

Locate the item in the search results screen 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 page …

Once the plugin has been activated, click on Library …

You can get to the plugin’s ‘library’ screen by choosing Media > Visualizer Library from the admin menu …

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

After installing the plugin, the library contains no charts.

The next step is to add the charts and graphs to your library that you will want to insert into your posts or pages.

How To Configure The Visualizer Plugin

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

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

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

The graph/chart type will pop 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 contains the series type (e.g. number, 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, simply refer to the sample CSV file that comes 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 from your computer select ‘From Computer‘ …

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

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

Upload CSV File From The Web

To learn 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, 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 selected, the plugin displays a range of customization options …

The WordPress Visualizer plugin gives you complete control of your chart or graph, and updates your display in real time …

For example, the pie chart offers many configurable options, including:

• General Settings – Configure settings for the chart’s title, 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 are satisfied with the way your graph or chart appears, click Create Chart …

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

Note that every element is given a unique ID displayed in a shortcode. As you will see very soon, this lets you easily embed charts and graphs into your content …

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

After adding a new element to the ‘Visualizer Library’, you can edit its details, clone it, or delete it …

Visualizer Plugin Usage

After creating a graph or chart and adding it to the Library, it’s really very simple to add it to your pages or posts.

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 Add Media …

Click on ‘Visualizations‘ …

Select the chart or graph 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 finished adding the shortcode, click on Publish to publish (or update) your content …

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

Your page or post will display your element in your content …

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

As you can see, the Visualizer plugin lets you insert and customize dynamic charts and graphs in your content. You can change your data and your changes will automatically be reflected wherever you have inserted your charts, graphs, comparison bars , etc. in your website. This makes adding dynamic chart information in WordPress very easy.

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 website below:

• WordPress Visualizer – Additional Tutorials

Congratulations! Now you know how to insert stunning and interactive bar charts and graphs into WordPress.

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