How To Add Charts And Graphs To WordPress

You’ve heard the old saying “a picture is worth a thousand words.” This is certainly true when you are presenting and explaining data.

Using graphs and charts is useful for making data much simpler to understand.

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

Charts and graphs help you present complex information so people can more easily understand it!

If you need to present information visually and dynamically on your WordPress site like charts and graphs, this step-by-step tutorial will show you how to create beautiful and updatable charts to your posts that:

• Your visitors can engage with
• Allows you to add graph or chart data from your computer or a web-based source of data
• Will dynamically resize for mobile device viewers

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 a desktop application, convert these into images and then simply add the files and an image to your pages.

Use WordPress Chart & Graph Plugins

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

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

Visualizer Plugin For WordPress

Plugin URL

You can install the plugin in your WordPress dashboard (see further below), or access and download WordPress Visualizer here:

http://wordpress.org/plugins/visualizer

Visualizer Plugin Description

The WordPress Visualizer plugin is a simple, easy to use and powerful tool that lets you create, manage and embed colorful and interactive graphs into your WordPress posts and pages in just 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 add-ons are required.

The plugin also contains a variety of built-in 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 site’s design. Various options are available for each chart that let you 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 additional software.

How To Install The Visualizer Plugin

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

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

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

Click OK to go ahead …

Activate the plugin after successfully installing it …

You can also activate the plugin in the Plugins area …

Once 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 admin menu …

This brings up the plugin’s Visualizer Library options page …

After installing the plugin, the library section will be empty.

The next step is to add the charts and graphs to your library that you will want to display in your content.

Visualizer Plugin Configuration

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

A gallery displaying all the 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 …

The graph/chart type will open up in a lightbox.

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

When creating your CSV data file, ensure that:

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

The screenshot below shows how to format your data …

If you are unsure about how to format your CSV file, just download the sample that comes with the plugin.

Once you have done this, 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‘ …

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

The plugin will import your data from the CSV file and display 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 data file with the right data), and then click ‘Next‘ …

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

The WordPress Visualizer plugin gives you complete control of 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 are happy with the look of your chart or graph, click Create Chart …

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

Note that new visual elements are given a unique ID displayed in a shortcode. As you will see very soon, this lets you add charts and graphs to your WordPress posts and pages quickly and easily …

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

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

Visualizer Plugin Usage

Once you have created a new element and added it to the Library, it’s simple to insert it into a post.

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 Add Media …

Click on ‘Visualizations‘ …

Find the element to be added to your content and click the “insert” icon …

This will place a shortcode into your content …

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

After publishing the page/post, click ‘View post’ to see it …

Your chart or graph will show in the content …

As mentioned earlier, Visualizer also displays responsive graphs for mobile device viewing …

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 your changes will automatically be reflected wherever you have inserted your charts, graphs, comparison bars , etc. in your website. This makes adding interactive graph data in WordPress very easy.

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

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 easily create appealing and dynamic bar charts and graphs in WordPress.

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