How To Add Charts And Graphs To WordPress

You’re probably familiar with the adage “a picture is worth a thousand words.” This is certainly true when you’re presenting and explaining complex information.

Using charts and graphs is great for breaking up long passage of technical information, and making statistical data simpler to understand.

You can use tables to present information, but if you want your audience to try and make sense of complex information with figures, trends and comparisons more easily, then charts and graphs let you present the information in a meaningful and intelligent way that can be easily understood.

Graphs and charts help present complex information so your audience can more easily interpret it!

Need to add charts or graphs to your WordPress pages? This step-by-step tutorial shows you how to use the WP Visualizer plugin – a simple, easy to use and powerful tool that allows you to create, manage and insert appealing and mobile-responsive graphs into your WordPress posts and pages in just a few mouse clicks that:

• Your visitors can interact with
• Lets you upload graph or chart data from your computer or a web-based data source
• Dynamically resizes for mobile screens

If you plan to display 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 present the data is to create the charts or graphs using a desktop application, convert these into .jpg or .png files and then simply insert the files and an image into your posts.

Use WordPress Chart & Graph Plugins

If you want to easily create dynamic 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 colorful and dynamic charts and graphs, it also lets you populate your charts and graphs with dynamic information.

Visualizer

Plugin URL

You can install the plugin from your WP dashboard (see a little further down the page), or access and download Visualizer here:

http://wordpress.org/plugins/visualizer

Visualizer Plugin Description

Visualizer is a simple, easy to use and powerful plugin for WordPress that allows you to create, manage and embed stunning graphs 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 components are required.

The plugin also comes with a variety of built-in that are optimized to address 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 the look and feel of your website. A number of options are available for each chart that let you fully 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 requiring the installation of extra plugins.

Plugin Installation

From your WP administration area, select Plugins > Add New from the main sidebar menu …

In the Add Plugins page type search for “visualizer” and click 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 page …

Once the plugin has been activated, click on Library …

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

This takes you to the plugin’s Visualizer Library section …

When you first install the plugin, this section will be empty.

The 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 ‘Add New’ …

A page will appear on your screen with all the different types of graphs available.

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

Your graph/chart type will pop up in a lightbox.

The next step is to upload a CSV file that contains the data you would like to populate your chart or graph with …

When creating your CSV data file, make sure that:

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

The screenshot below shows how to format your data correctly …

If you are not sure how to format your CSV file, simply use the sample spreadsheet that comes with the plugin.

Once you have completed this step, select the 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 hard drive select ‘From Computer‘ …

Use the browser to locate and select your data file and then 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 shows you how to create, save and publish data to a Visualizer chart or graph using Google Spreadsheet, see the article below:

• 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 correct data), and then click ‘Next‘ …

Depending on the chart or graph type you’ve selected, the plugin displays various customization settings and options …

The WordPress Visualizer plugin gives you complete control of your chart or graph, and updates your display in real time …

For example, the pie chart offers various configurable options, such as:

• 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 satisfied with the look of your chart or graph, click Create Chart …

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

Note that new visual elements are given a unique ID displayed as a shortcode. As you will see in just a moment, this lets you insert graphs and charts into your WordPress pages and posts quickly …

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

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

Visualizer Usage

After creating a new element and adding it to Visualizer, it’s easy to add it to a page or 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 your content and click on the ‘Add Media‘ button …

Click on ‘Visualizations‘ …

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

This will place a shortcode into your content …

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

Once your post/page has been published, click ‘View post’ to see the result …

The item will display in the location you specified …

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

As you can see, Visualizer lets you insert and customize dynamic charts and graphs in your content. You can change your data and your changes will automatically be reflected wherever you have inserted your charts, graphs, comparison bars , etc. in your website. This is great if you’re working with interactive chart data in WordPress.

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

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

• WordPress Visualizer – Additional Tutorials

Congratulations! Now you know how to create colorful and mobile-responsive pie charts and graphs in WordPress with WordPress Visualizer.

***

***