How To Add Charts And Graphs To WordPress

No doubt you’re familiar with the adage “a picture is worth a thousand words.” This certainly applies when you are trying to present and explain complex information.

Using charts and graphs is great for making technical data more easily digestible.

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

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

Need to add charts and graphs to WordPress? This step-by-step tutorial shows you how to use WordPress Visualizer – a simple, easy to use and powerful tool that lets you create, manage and insert great-looking and interactive graphs into your WordPress posts and pages in a few simple steps that:

• Your visitors can engage with
• Allows you to upload data from your computer or an online data source
• Is dynamically responsive for mobile browsing

If you are displaying visual data like bar charts, comparison graphs or trending graphs that contain static information (e.g. historical data), an easier option is to create your graphs or charts using a desktop application, convert these into images and then simply insert your files and an image into your pages.

Use WordPress Chart & Graph Plugins

If you want to easily embed dynamic bar charts and graphs 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 appealing and interactive charts and graphs, it also lets you populate your charts and graphs with updateable data.

WP Plugin: Visualizer

Plugin URL

You can install the plugin in your WP dashboard (we will explain how to do this a little further down the page), or download WordPress Visualizer the WordPress plugin directory using the link below:

http://wordpress.org/plugins/visualizer

Visualizer Description

WP Visualizer is a simple, easy to use and powerful tool that allows you to create, manage and embed colorful graphs into your WordPress posts and pages in just a few mouse clicks.

WordPress 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 plugins or add-ons are needed.

Visualizer also comes with a variety of charts 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

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 web design. Several 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 blog or site visitors can see your charts and graphs on their mobile web browsers without requiring the installation of extra software.

How To Install The Visualizer Plugin

Inside your WP dashboard, select Plugins > Add New from the main menu …

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

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

Click OK to proceed …

Activate the plugin after installation is successful …

You can also activate the plugin in the Plugins page …

Once the plugin has been activated, click on Library …

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

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

After installing the plugin, the library will contain no charts.

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

How To Configure The Visualizer Plugin

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

A page will load on your browser displaying all of the default kinds of charts available.

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

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

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

When creating your CSV data file, ensure that:

• The first row includes the column headings.
• The 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 not sure how to format your CSV file, simply use the sample CSV file provided 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 a CSV file from your computer select ‘From Computer‘ …

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

The plugin imports the data and displays it using the graph/chart type 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, see the article below:

• How To Populate Data Using Google Spreadsheet

After importing your data, make sure that all of the information is correct (if not, click on the ‘Back’ button and reupload a new data file containing the correct data), and then click ‘Next‘ …

Depending on the chart or graph type you’ve picked, the plugin will display various customization options …

The plugin gives you full control of your chart or graph, 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 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’re happy with the look of your chart or graph, click on the ‘Create Chart’ button …

The new graph or chart 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 shortly, this lets you add charts and graphs to your posts very easily …

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

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

Visualizer Plugin Usage

Once you have created a chart or graph and added it to the Visualizer Library, adding it to a post is quite simple.

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 you want to insert into your content and click the “insert” icon …

This will place a shortcode into your content …

After you have finished adding the shortcode, click on Publish to publish (or update) your post or page …

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

Your element will show up in your content …

As mentioned earlier, the plugin also displays responsive visual elements for mobile viewers …

As you can see, the Visualizer plugin lets you add 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 website. This makes adding interactive graph data in WordPress really efficient.

The developers of this plugin have created a number of 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, go to the site below:

• WordPress Visualizer – Additional Tutorials

Congratulations! Now you know how to easily create colorful and dynamic pie charts and graphs in WordPress with WP Visualizer.

***

***