How To Add Charts And Graphs To WordPress

You’ve no doubt heard the adage “a picture is worth a thousand words.” This certainly applies when you are trying to present or explain data.

Graphs and charts help to make technical or statistical data a whole lot simpler to grasp.

You can present information using tables, but if you want your audience to try and interpret complex information with figures, trends and comparisons quickly, then graphs and charts are perfect for helping them interpret the information.

Graphs and charts help explain complex information so your audience 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 – an easy-to-use and powerful plugin that lets you create, manage and embed eye-catching and interactive graphs into your WordPress posts and pages that:

• Your web visitors can engage with
• Lets you add data from your computer or a web-based data source
• Will resize dynamically for mobile screens

If you are displaying visual data like bar charts, comparison charts or trending graphs containing information that is not going to change (e.g. historical data), an easier option is to create the charts or graphs using an image editing application, convert these into images and then simply insert the image files into your site content.

Use WordPress Chart & Graph Plugins

If you want to easily add interactive 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 WordPress plugin that is simple to install, easy-to-use and allows you to not only create colorful and mobile-responsive charts and graphs, it also lets you populate your charts and graphs with updateable content.

WP Plugin: Visualizer

Visualizer URL

You can install the plugin from your WordPress dashboard (explained further down the page), or download Visualizer the WP plugin repository using the link below:

http://wordpress.org/plugins/visualizer

Visualizer Plugin Description

WP Visualizer is an easy-to-use and powerful tool that lets you create, manage and insert appealing and dynamic charts into your WordPress posts and pages in a few mouse clicks.

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 add-ons are needed.

Visualizer also comes with 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 a flexible and customizable plugin, allowing you to use Google Chart Tools with their default setting, or configure an extensive set of options to match your web design. Several 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 visitors can see your charts and graphs on their mobile device browsers without requiring the installation of extra plugins.

Plugin Installation

From your WP administration area, select Plugins > Add New from the main sidebar menu …

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

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

Click OK to proceed …

Activate the plugin after installing it …

You can also activate the plugin in the Plugins area …

Once the plugin has been activated, click on Library …

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

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

When you first install the plugin, the library will contain no charts.

The next step is to add add charts and graphs to your plugin library.

Visualizer Configuration

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

An image gallery displaying all of the default kinds of charts and graphs available will come up 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 pop up in a lightbox.

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

When creating your CSV data file, ensure that:

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

The screenshot below shows how to format your data correctly …

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

Next, 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 from your computer select ‘From Computer‘ …

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

The plugin imports the data from the CSV file and displays it using the graph/chart type you have selected …

Upload CSV File From The Web

For a step-by-step 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, make sure that all of the information is correct (if not, click on the ‘Back’ button and reupload a data file containing the right data), and click ‘Next‘ …

Depending on the chart or graph type you have picked, the plugin will display a number of customization options …

The WordPress Visualizer plugin gives you full control over your information, 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 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 the way your graph or chart looks, click on the ‘Create Chart’ button …

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

Note that new visual elements are given a unique ID displayed as a shortcode. As you will see very soon, 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 adding an item to the ‘Visualizer Library’, you can edit it, duplicate it, or delete it …

Visualizer Usage

After you’ve created a element and added it to the Library, adding it to a post 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 the content and click on Add Media …

Click on ‘Visualizations‘ …

Find the element to be inserted into your content and click on the “insert” icon …

This inserts a shortcode into your content …

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

Once your page/post has been published, click ‘View post’ to see it …

You will see your visual element in the location you specified …

As mentioned previously, the plugin also displays responsive charts for mobile screens …

As you can see, the Visualizer plugin lets you insert and customize dynamic charts and graphs in your content. You can update your data and the changes will automatically be reflected throughout your website. This is a real time-saving benefit of the plugin if you’re adding dynamic graph information in WordPress.

The plugin developers have created a series of 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, go to the website below:

• WordPress Visualizer – Additional Tutorials

Congratulations! Now you know how to easily add colorful and interactive pie charts and graphs to WordPress with WP Visualizer plugin.

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