How To Add Charts And Graphs To WordPress

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

Using charts and graphs is great for breaking up long text passages, and making statistical data and information a lot simpler to digest.

You can use tables to present data, but if you want people to try and interpret complex data with numbers, percentages or comparisons easily, then graphs and charts allow you to present your data in a meaningful and intelligent way that can be easily understood.

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

Need to add charts and graphs to WordPress? This tutorial shows you how to use WordPress Visualizer – an easy-to-use and powerful WordPress plugin that allows you to create, manage and embed great-looking and dynamic charts into your WordPress posts and pages that:

• Your site visitors can engage with
• Lets you upload graph or chart data from your hard drive or a web-based data source
• Is dynamically responsive for mobile viewers

If you are displaying visual data like pie charts, comparison charts or trending graphs containing information that is not going to change (e.g. historical data), an easier way to present 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 posts or pages.

Use WordPress Chart & Graph Plugins

If you want to create dynamic bar charts and graphs in 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 users 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 URL

You can install the plugin from your WordPress dashboard (we show you how to do this further below), or access and download Visualizer here:

http://wordpress.org/plugins/visualizer

Visualizer Plugin Description

Visualizer is a simple, easy to use and powerful plugin that lets you create, manage and embed mobile-responsive charts into your WordPress posts and pages with just 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 or add-ons are required.

Visualizer also provides a variety of built-in optimized for your data visualization needs, including:

• Line chart
• Area chart
• Bar chart
• Column chart
• Pie chart
• Geo chart
• Gauge chart
• Candlestick chart
• Scatter chart

WordPress Visualizer 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. A number of options are available for each chart that allow you to 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 site visitors can see your charts and graphs on their mobile device browsers without having to install any additional software.

Plugin Installation

From your WordPress dashboard, 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 go ahead …

Activate the plugin …

You can also activate the plugin in the Plugins area …

Once the plugin has been activated, click on Library …

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

This brings up the plugin’s Visualizer Library settings …

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

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

Visualizer Configuration

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

A page will load in your screen displaying all of the different types of charts available.

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

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

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

When creating your CSV data file, make sure that:

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

The screenshot below shows how to format your data as per the requirements above …

If you are not sure how to format your CSV file, simply refer to the sample spreadsheet provided with the plugin.

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

Upload CSV File From Computer

To upload the CSV file from your hard drive select ‘From Computer‘ …

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

The plugin imports your data and displays it using the graph/chart type 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 the 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 have selected, the plugin displays various customization 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 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 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 way your graph or chart is looking, click Create Chart …

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

Note that each element is given a unique ID displayed in a shortcode. As you will see very soon, this allows you to add charts and graphs to your pages quickly …

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

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

Visualizer Plugin Usage

After creating a element and adding it to the Visualizer Library, it’s simple to add it to a post or page.

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

Click on ‘Visualizations‘ …

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

This adds 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 …

After updating your page/post, click ‘View post’ to see the result …

Your page or post displays the chart in the location where you’ve inserted the shortcode …

As mentioned earlier, Visualizer also displays responsive elements for mobile device browsers …

As you can see, Visualizer lets you insert and customize dynamic charts and graphs in your content. You can edit your data and the changes will automatically be reflected throughout your site. This is great if you’re managing dynamic graph data in WordPress.

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 the Visualizer plugin for WordPress.

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 beautiful and interactive bar charts and graphs in WordPress with WordPress Visualizer.

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