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 and explaining data.

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

You can use tables to present information, but if you want people to try and interpret complex information with numbers, percentages or comparisons easily, then graphs and charts allow you to present your information in an intelligent and meaningful manner that can be quickly and easily processed.

Graphs and charts help present complex data so your audience can more easily understand it!

If you need to learn how to display dynamic visual content on your WordPress site using charts and graphs, this tutorial will show you how to create and add great-looking and interactive charts to your pages and posts that:

• Your web visitors can interact with
• Lets you upload data from your computer or an online source of data
• Resizes dynamically for mobile screens

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), a simple method you can use 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 page or post.

Use WordPress Chart & Graph Plugins

If you want to embed dynamic bars and pie charts into 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 colorful and mobile-responsive charts and graphs, it also lets you populate your charts and graphs with updatable information.

Visualizer Plugin For WordPress

Visualizer Plugin URL

You can install the plugin inside your WordPress dashboard (see a little further down the page), or access and download Visualizer the WP free plugin repository using the link below:

http://wordpress.org/plugins/visualizer

Plugin Description

Visualizer is an easy-to-use and powerful plugin that lets you create, manage and insert appealing graphs and 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 components are required.

Visualizer also comes with 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 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 site’s design. Various options are available for each chart that let you fully 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 visitors can see your charts and graphs on their mobile devices without having to install any extra software.

How To Install The Visualizer Plugin

From your WP admin area, select Plugins > Add New from the navigation sidebar menu …

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

Locate the item 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 page …

Once your plugin has been activated, click on Library …

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

This brings up the plugin’s Visualizer Library section …

After installing 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 and pages.

How To Configure The Visualizer Plugin

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

A page will appear on your browser with all of the different types of charts available.

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

The selected 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:

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

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

If you are unsure about how to format your data CSV, just refer to the sample spreadsheet that comes with the plugin.

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

Upload CSV File From Computer

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

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

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

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 new data file with the correct data), and then click ‘Next‘ …

Depending on the chart or graph type selected, the plugin will display a range of customization options and settings …

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

For example, the pie chart offers various 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 are satisfied with the look of your chart or graph, click on the ‘Create Chart’ button …

The chart or graph 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 graphs and charts to your posts very quickly …

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

After an item has been added to the ‘Visualizer Library’, you can edit its details, clone it, or delete it …

Visualizer Usage

Once you have created a new element and added it to the Visualizer Library, it’s very easy to add it to 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 the content and click on Add Media …

Click on ‘Visualizations‘ …

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

This will add a shortcode for the element into your content …

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

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

You will see the graph in the content …

As mentioned earlier, Visualizer also displays responsive charts and graphs for mobile users …

As you can see, Visualizer lets you insert and customize dynamic charts and graphs in your content. You can edit your data and your changes will automatically be reflected wherever you have inserted your charts, graphs, comparison bars , etc. in your site. This makes managing dynamic graph data in WordPress really easy.

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

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

• WordPress Visualizer – Additional Tutorials

Congratulations! Now you know how to easily create great-looking and interactive charts and graphs in WordPress.

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