How To Add Charts And Graphs To WordPress

No doubt you’re familiar with the old saying “a picture is worth a thousand words.” This certainly applies when you are presenting and explaining data.

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

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

Graphs and charts help you explain complex data so people can more easily understand it!

Need to add charts or graphs to your WordPress content? This 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 embed eye-catching and mobile-responsive charts and graphs into your WordPress posts and pages with just a few simple steps that:

• Your site visitors can engage with
• Lets you add data from your hard drive or a web-based data source
• Will dynamically resize for mobile screens

If you plan to display visual data like bar charts, comparison graphs or trending graphs that contain static information (e.g. historical data), an easier option is to create the charts or graphs using a desktop application, convert these into jpg or png images and then simply add your image to your page or post.

Use WordPress Chart & Graph Plugins

If you want to easily add interactive bars 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 great plugin for WordPress users that is simple to install, easy-to-use and allows you to not only create beautiful and dynamic charts and graphs, it also lets you populate your charts and graphs with dynamic data.

Visualizer – WP Plugin

Visualizer URL

You can install the plugin in your WP dashboard (we explain how to do this further below), or download WP Visualizer here:

http://wordpress.org/plugins/visualizer

Visualizer Description

The Visualizer plugin is a simple, easy to use and powerful tool that allows you to create, manage and insert beautiful and interactive graphs into your WordPress posts and pages with a few simple steps.

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 are needed.

The plugin also contains a variety of charts 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 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 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 web visitors can see your charts and graphs on their mobile browsers without having to install extra software.

How To Install WP Visualizer

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

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

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

Click OK to proceed …

Activate the plugin after successfully installing it …

You can also activate the plugin in the Plugins area …

After the plugin has been activated, click on Library …

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

This takes you to the plugin’s Visualizer Library settings screen …

When you first install the plugin, the library contains no charts.

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

How To Configure The Plugin

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

An image gallery displaying all the different kinds of charts and graphs available will come up on your screen.

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

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

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

When creating your CSV data file, ensure that:

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

The screenshot below shows how to format your data …

If you are unsure about how to format your data CSV, just download the sample spreadsheet supplied with the plugin.

Next, 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 from your computer select ‘From Computer‘ …

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

The plugin will now import your data from the CSV file and display it using the graph/chart type you have previously selected …

Upload CSV File From The Web

For a step-by-step 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 the data, check that all of your information is correct (if not, click on the ‘Back’ button and reupload a data file containing the correct data), and then click ‘Next‘ …

Depending on the chart or graph type you’ve selected, the plugin will display a number of customization options and settings …

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

For example, the pie chart offers many 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 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 how your chart or graph appears, click Create Chart …

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

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

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

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

Visualizer Plugin Usage

After creating a graph or chart and adding it to the Visualizer Library, adding it to pages or posts 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 the ‘Add Media‘ button …

Click on ‘Visualizations‘ …

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

This inserts a shortcode for the element into your content …

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

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

You will see your item in the location you specified …

As mentioned earlier, the plugin also displays responsive graphs and charts for mobile browsing …

As you can see, WordPress Visualizer allows you to 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 is great if you’re working with interactive graph data in WordPress.

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

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

• WordPress Visualizer – Additional Tutorials

Congratulations! Now you know how to add colorful and dynamic pie charts and graphs to WordPress with WP Visualizer plugin.

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