How To Add Charts And Graphs To WordPress

You’ve no doubt heard the saying “a picture is worth a thousand words.” This certainly applies when you’re presenting or explaining complex information.

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

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

Graphs and charts help present complex information so people can more easily understand it!

If you need to learn how to display information visually and dynamically on your WordPress site using graphs and charts, this step-by-step tutorial will show you how to create eye-catching and interactive charts and graphs to your WP pages that:

• Your visitors can engage with
• Lets you upload graph or chart data from your hard drive or an online source of data
• Will resize dynamically for mobile screens

If you are displaying visual data like pie charts, comparison graphs or trending graphs that contain static information (e.g. historical data), a simple method you can use to display your information is to create your graphs or charts using an image editing application, convert these into images and then simply insert the files and an image into your web content.

Use WordPress Chart & Graph Plugins

If you want to add dynamic bar charts 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 plugin for WordPress sites that is simple to install, easy-to-use and allows you to not only create attractive and mobile-responsive graphs and charts, it also lets you populate your charts and graphs with dynamic content.

Visualizer

Plugin URL

You can install the plugin inside your WordPress dashboard (we show you how to do this further down the page), or download the Visualizer plugin the WordPress free plugin repository using the link below:

http://wordpress.org/plugins/visualizer

Visualizer Plugin Description

WordPress Visualizer is an easy-to-use and powerful tool that lets you create, manage and embed great-looking and mobile-responsive charts into your WordPress posts and pages with just a few mouse clicks.

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 extra components are required.

Visualizer also comes with a variety of built-in 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 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 web design. Several options are available for each chart that let you further 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 devices without having to install any extra plugins.

How To Install WP Visualizer

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

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

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

Click OK to go ahead …

Activate the plugin after installation is successful …

You can also activate the plugin in the Plugins page …

After the plugin has been activated, click on Library …

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

This brings up the plugin’s Visualizer Library settings …

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

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

How To Configure Visualizer

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

A page will load on your screen displaying all the kinds of graphs and charts available.

Select the type of graph or chart 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 your data …

When creating your CSV data file, make sure that:

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

The screenshot below shows how to format your data as required …

If you are not sure how to format your CSV file, simply refer to the sample spreadsheet 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 the CSV file and data from your computer select ‘From Computer‘ …

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

The plugin will now import the data and display it using the graph/chart type you have previously 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 the data, check that all of your information is correct (if not, click on the ‘Back’ button and reupload a new data file containing the right data), and then click ‘Next‘ …

Depending on the chart or graph type you’ve chosen, the plugin will display a range of customization options …

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

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

Note that every element is given a unique ID displayed as a shortcode. As you will see very soon, this lets you insert graphs and charts into your WordPress content quickly …

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

After adding an element to the ‘Visualizer Library’, you can edit it, duplicate it, or trash it …

Visualizer Usage

After creating a graph or chart and adding it to the Library, it’s simple to add it to your pages and posts.

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‘ …

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

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

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

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

You will see the item in your content …

As mentioned previously, Visualizer also displays responsive graphs for mobile users …

As you can see, the Visualizer plugin allows you to insert and customize dynamic charts and graphs in your content. You can modify your data and the changes will automatically be reflected wherever you have inserted your charts, graphs, comparison bars , etc. in your site. This makes adding dynamic graph information in WordPress really easy.

The plugin developers have created a series of step-by-step tutorials you can refer to for ways to edit, customize and use Visualizer.

For additional tutorials on editing, copying, deleting and adding data to your charts, visit the site below:

• WordPress Visualizer – Additional Tutorials

Congratulations! Now you know how to easily insert colorful and interactive pie charts and graphs into your WordPress pages and posts with WordPress Visualizer plugin.

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