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 are trying to present and explain complex information.

Using charts and graphs is great for making technical data more easily digestible.

You can present data with tables, but if you want people to try and make sense of complex data with numbers, percentages or relationships more easily, then charts and graphs are perfect for helping them understand your data.

Charts and graphs help explain complex information 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 – an easy-to-use and powerful plugin that lets you create, manage and embed stunning graphs into your WordPress posts and pages that:

• Your visitors can engage with
• Allows you to upload data from your hard drive or an online data source
• Will dynamically resize for viewing on mobile devices

If you are displaying visual data like bar charts, comparison graphs or trending graphs containing information that is not going to change (e.g. historical data), an easier way to display your information is to create your charts or graphs using an image editing application, convert these into jpg and png files and then simply add your image files to your post or page.

Use WordPress Chart & Graph Plugins

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

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

WP Plugin: Visualizer

Visualizer Plugin URL

You can install the plugin inside your WP dashboard (explained further below), or download Visualizer here:

http://wordpress.org/plugins/visualizer

Visualizer Plugin Description

WP Visualizer is a simple, easy to use and powerful plugin for WordPress that allows you to create, manage and embed great-looking charts and 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 extra plugins or add-ons are required.

Visualizer also provides a variety of charts that are optimized to address all 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 your web design. Various options are available for each chart that let you fully 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 web browsers without having to install additional software.

Plugin Installation

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

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

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

Click OK to proceed …

Activate the plugin …

You can also activate the plugin in the Plugins page …

After the plugin has been activated, click on Library …

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

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

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 chart or graph to the Visualizer library, click on ‘Add New’ …

A gallery displaying all 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 …

Your selected graph/chart type will open up in a lightbox.

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

When creating your CSV data file, make sure that:

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

The screenshot below shows how to format your data correctly …

If you are not sure how to format your CSV file, just download the sample spreadsheet supplied with the plugin.

Once you have created your CSV file, select the data source (‘From Computer’ or ‘From Web’) in the ‘Upload CSV File’ section.

Upload CSV File From Computer

To upload a CSV file and data from your computer select ‘From Computer‘ …

Use the browser to 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 previously 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, check that all of the information is correct (if not, click on the ‘Back’ button and reupload a data file with the correct data), and then click ‘Next‘ …

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

The plugin gives you total control over your chart or graph, and updates your display in real time …

For example, the pie chart offers various 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 are satisfied with the look of your chart or graph, click on the ‘Create Chart’ button …

The new graph or chart will now be added to the ‘Visualizer Library’ section …

Note that each element is given a unique ID displayed in a shortcode. As you will see shortly, this allows you to easily embed charts and graphs into your content …

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

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

Plugin Usage

Once you’ve created a new graph or chart and added it to the Library, it’s very easy 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 would like to insert your visual element into your content and click on Add Media …

Click on ‘Visualizations‘ …

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

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

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

After publishing the post, click ‘View post’ to see the result …

The visual element will show up in the location you specified …

As mentioned earlier, Visualizer also displays responsive visual elements for viewing on mobile devices …

As you can see, WordPress Visualizer allows you to insert and customize dynamic charts and graphs in your content. You can modify your data and the changes will automatically be reflected throughout your website. This is one of the great benefits of using the Visualizer plugin if you’re managing dynamic chart data in WordPress.

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

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

• WordPress Visualizer – Additional Tutorials

Congratulations! Now you know how to easily add stunning and dynamic pie charts and graphs to WordPress.

***

***