How To Add Charts And Graphs To WordPress

You’re probably familiar with the old saying “a picture is worth a thousand words.” This is certainly true when you are presenting or explaining complex data.

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

You can present information using tables, but if you want people to try and interpret complex information with figures, trends or relationships easily, then graphs and charts let you present your data in a meaningful and intelligent manner that can be quickly and easily processed.

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

Need to add charts and graphs to WordPress? This step-by-step tutorial shows you how to use WordPress Visualizer – a simple, easy to use and powerful plugin for WordPress that allows you to create, manage and embed great-looking and dynamic charts and graphs into your WordPress posts and pages in a few simple steps that:

• Your visitors can engage with
• Allows you to add graph or chart data from your computer or a web-based source of data
• Is dynamically responsive for mobile devices

If you plan to display visual data like bar charts, comparison graphs or trending graphs that contain static information (e.g. historical data), a simple method you can use to display the data is to create your graphs or charts using a desktop application, convert these into images and then simply add the image to your pages or posts.

Use WordPress Chart & Graph Plugins

If you want to easily embed dynamic bar charts and pie graphs into WordPress with no coding skills required, the easiest way to do this is to use a plugin.

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

Visualizer

Plugin URL

You can install the plugin in your WordPress dashboard (we explain how to do this further down the page), or access and download the WP Visualizer plugin here:

http://wordpress.org/plugins/visualizer

Visualizer Description

WP Visualizer is a simple, easy to use and powerful tool that lets you create, manage and embed stunning graphs and charts into your WordPress posts and pages in 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 are needed.

The plugin also comes with 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

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. Various options are available for each chart that let you 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 browsers without having to install any extra plugins.

How To Install The Visualizer Plugin

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 hit enter …

Locate the entry in the search results area and click the “Install Now” button …

Click OK to go ahead …

Activate the plugin …

You can also activate the plugin in the Plugins page …

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 the main menu …

This takes you to the plugin’s Visualizer Library options 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 will want to display in your posts or pages.

How To Configure The Visualizer Plugin

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

You will see all of the different types of charts available.

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

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

The next step is to upload a CSV file with your data …

When creating your CSV data file, ensure that:

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

The screenshot below shows how to format your data as required …

If you are not sure how to format your data CSV, just download the sample spreadsheet 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 and data from your hard drive select ‘From Computer‘ …

Use the browser to locate and select your file and click on ‘Open‘ …

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

Upload CSV File From The Web

For a 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 the data, check that all of the 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 you’ve picked, the plugin will display a range of customization settings …

Visualizer gives you total control over your information, and updates your display in real time …

For example, the pie chart offers many configurable options, such as:

• 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 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’re satisfied with how your chart or graph is looking, click on the ‘Create Chart’ button …

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

Note that new visual elements are given a unique ID displayed in a shortcode. As you will see in a moment, this lets you embed graphs and charts into your WordPress posts easily …

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 its details, duplicate it, or trash it …

Visualizer Usage

Once you’ve created a graph or chart and added it to Visualizer, it’s simple to add it to your posts and pages.

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 your content and click on the ‘Add Media‘ button …

Click on ‘Visualizations‘ …

Select the graph or chart you want to insert into your content and click on the “insert” icon …

This inserts a shortcode for the element into your content …

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

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

Your visual element will show up in where you placed the shortcode …

As mentioned earlier, the plugin also displays responsive visual elements for mobile device browsers …

As you can see, Visualizer allows you to add and customize dynamic charts and graphs in your content. You can update your data and the changes will automatically be reflected wherever you have inserted your charts, graphs, comparison bars , etc. in your site. This is very convenient if you’re adding dynamic graph data in WordPress.

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

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

• WordPress Visualizer – Additional Tutorials

Congratulations! Now you know how to easily insert stunning pie charts and graphs into your WordPress posts.

***

***