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 are trying to present and explain complex information.

Using charts and graphs is useful for making statistical data and information more easily digestible.

You can use tables to present information, but if you want people to try and interpret complex information with figures, percentages or comparisons more easily, then graphs and charts are perfect for helping them understand the information.

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

Need to add charts and graphs to your WordPress content? This tutorial shows you how to use WP Visualizer – a simple, easy to use and powerful tool that lets you create, manage and embed great-looking graphs into your WordPress posts and pages that:

• Your visitors can engage with
• Lets you add data from your hard drive or an online data source
• Dynamically resizes for mobile screens

If you plan to display visual data like bar charts, comparison bars or trending graphs that contain static information (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 add the images to your post or page.

Use WordPress Chart & Graph Plugins

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

Fortunately, there is a plugin for WordPress that is simple to install, easy-to-use and allows you to not only create appealing and dynamic graphs and charts, it also lets you populate your charts and graphs with dynamic information.

Visualizer Plugin For WordPress

Visualizer URL

You can install the plugin from your WordPress dashboard (see a little further below), or download WP Visualizer here:

http://wordpress.org/plugins/visualizer

Visualizer Description

Visualizer is a simple, easy to use and powerful WordPress plugin that allows you to create, manage and insert mobile-responsive charts and graphs into your WordPress posts and pages in 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 additional add-ons are needed.

Visualizer also comes with a variety of built-in that are optimized to address 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 site’s design. Various options are available for each chart that allow you to further 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 site visitors can see your charts and graphs on their mobile device browsers without having to install additional software.

How To Install WordPress Visualizer

Inside your WordPress administration area, select Plugins > Add New from the main sidebar menu …

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

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

Click OK to proceed …

Activate the plugin after installing it …

You can also activate the plugin in the Plugins area …

Once the plugin has been activated, click on Library …

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

This brings up the plugin’s Visualizer Library page …

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

The next step is to add the charts and graphs to your library that you plan to publish to your content.

Visualizer Plugin Configuration

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

You will be presented with all of the built-in types of charts and graphs available.

Select the graph or chart type 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 with your data …

When creating your CSV data file, ensure that:

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

The screenshot below shows how to format your data correctly …

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

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

Upload CSV File From Computer

To upload a CSV file and data from your computer select ‘From Computer‘ …

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

The plugin imports the data from the CSV file and displays 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 correct data), and click ‘Next‘ …

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

Visualizer gives you total control over your chart or graph, and updates your display in real time …

For example, the pie chart offers various configurable options, including:

• General Settings – Configure chart title settings, 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 graph or chart, click on the ‘Create Chart’ button …

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

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

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

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

Visualizer Usage

After creating a new graph or chart and adding it to Visualizer, adding it to a page is very simple.

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 the ‘Add Media‘ button …

Click on ‘Visualizations‘ …

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

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

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

After the page has been updated, click ‘View post’ to see it …

Your post or page displays your graph or chart in the content …

As mentioned previously, Visualizer also displays responsive elements for mobile viewing …

As you can see, WordPress Visualizer lets you add and customize dynamic charts and graphs in your content. You can edit your data and the changes will automatically be reflected wherever you have inserted your charts, graphs, comparison bars , etc. in your website. This is a real time-saver if you’re adding dynamic chart data in WordPress.

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

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

• WordPress Visualizer – Additional Tutorials

Congratulations! Now you know how to create colorful and interactive charts and graphs in WordPress with WordPress Visualizer plugin.

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