How To Add Charts And Graphs To WordPress

No doubt you’re familiar with the saying “a picture is worth a thousand words.” This is certainly true when you’re presenting or explaining complex data.

Graphs and charts can help to break up long passage of text, and make technical data more easily digestible.

You can use tables to present information, but if you want people to try and interpret complex data with numbers, percentages and relationships easily, then graphs and charts are perfect for helping them understand your information.

Charts and graphs help you present complex information so your audience can more easily interpret it!

If you want to learn how to present information visually and dynamically on your WordPress site using graphs and charts, this tutorial will show you exactly how to create and add colorful and updateable graphs and charts to your posts and pages that:

• Your visitors can interact with
• Lets you add chart or graph data from your computer or an online data source
• Dynamically resizes for mobile browsers

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

Use WordPress Chart & Graph Plugins

If you want to add interactive bars 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 free plugin for WordPress users that is simple to install, easy-to-use and allows you to not only create great-looking and dynamic graphs and charts, it also lets you populate your charts and graphs with dynamic data.

WordPress Plugin: Visualizer

Plugin URL

You can install the plugin from your WordPress dashboard (we explain how to do this a little further below), or access and download WordPress 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 eye-catching graphs and charts into your WordPress posts and pages in a few simple steps.

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

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. Several options are available for each chart that allow you to fully customize their look.

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 plugins.

How To Install Visualizer

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

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

Locate the item 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 area …

After the plugin has been activated, click on Library …

You can 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 section …

When you first install the plugin, the library contains no charts.

Your next step is to add add charts and graphs to the plugin library.

How To Configure The Visualizer Plugin

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

You will be presented with all of the different types of graphs 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 lightbox.

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

When creating your CSV data file, make sure that:

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

The screenshot below shows how to format your data …

If you are unsure about how to format your data CSV, just study the sample supplied with the plugin.

Once you have completed this step, 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 and data from your computer select ‘From Computer‘ …

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

The plugin imports the data and displays it using the graph/chart type 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 right data), and then click ‘Next‘ …

Depending on the chart or graph type selected, the plugin displays a number of customization settings …

The plugin gives you full 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 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 happy with the look of your chart or graph, click Create Chart …

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

Note that new visual elements are given a unique ID displayed as a shortcode. As you will see shortly, this allows you to add graphs and charts to your WordPress content easily …

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

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

Visualizer Plugin Usage

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

Click on ‘Visualizations‘ …

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

This will place a shortcode into your content …

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

After updating the post, click ‘View post’ to see the results …

You will see your chart or graph in the location you specified …

As mentioned earlier, the plugin also displays responsive charts for mobile browsing …

As you can see, the Visualizer plugin lets you 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 makes adding interactive chart information in WordPress very efficient.

The plugin developers have created a number of step-by-step tutorials you can use to learn how to edit, customize and use the plugin.

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

• WordPress Visualizer – Additional Tutorials

Congratulations! Now you know how to insert eye-catching pie charts and graphs into WordPress with WordPress Visualizer plugin.

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