How To Add Charts And Graphs To WordPress

You’re probably familiar with the saying “a picture is worth a thousand words.” This certainly applies when you’re trying to present and explain complex information.

Using charts and graphs is a great way to break up content that contains too much text, and make statistical data much easier to understand.

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

Charts and graphs help explain complex information so people can more easily interpret it!

If you need to present information visually and dynamically on your WordPress site like charts and graphs, this tutorial will show you exactly how to create and add attractive and interactive charts and graphs to your posts and pages that:

• Your visitors can interact with
• Allows you to add graph or chart data from your computer or an online source of data
• Will resize dynamically for mobile devices

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

Use WordPress Chart & Graph Plugins

If you want to add dynamic bars and pie charts to WordPress pages and posts with no coding skills required, the easiest way to do this is to use a plugin.

Fortunately, there is a free WordPress plugin that is simple to install, easy-to-use and allows you to not only create colorful and mobile-responsive graphs and charts, it also lets you populate your charts and graphs with updatable content.

WP Plugin: Visualizer

Visualizer Plugin URL

You can install the plugin in your WordPress dashboard (explained a little further below), or download Visualizer from the link below:

http://wordpress.org/plugins/visualizer

Visualizer Description

The Visualizer plugin is a simple, easy to use and powerful tool that lets you create, manage and insert appealing and interactive charts into your WordPress posts and pages in a few mouse clicks.

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 extra plugins or add-ons are needed.

WordPress Visualizer also contains 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 site’s design. A number of 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 blog or site visitors can see your charts and graphs on their mobile devices without having to install any extra plugins.

Plugin Installation

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

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

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

Click OK to continue …

Activate the plugin …

You can also activate the plugin in the Plugins area …

Once your plugin has been activated, click on Library …

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

This brings up the plugin’s Visualizer Library settings …

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

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

How To Configure Visualizer

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

You will see all of the default types of graphs available.

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

The 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:

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

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

If you are not sure how to format your CSV file, just download the sample CSV file that comes with the plugin.

Once you have done this, 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 from your computer select ‘From Computer‘ …

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

The plugin imports the data 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, see the article below:

• How To Populate Data Using Google Spreadsheet

After importing the data, make sure 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 chosen, the plugin displays a number of customization options …

The WordPress Visualizer plugin gives you complete control over your information, and updates your display in real time …

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

• 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 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 are satisfied with how your graph or chart is looking, click Create Chart …

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

Note that each element is given a unique ID displayed in a shortcode. As you will see in just a moment, this allows you to easily embed graphs and charts into your content …

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

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

Plugin Usage

Once you’ve 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‘ …

Find the chart or graph you want to add to your content and click on the “insert” icon …

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

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

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

Your post or page should display the item in the content …

As mentioned earlier, Visualizer also displays responsive charts and graphs for mobile devices …

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 makes adding dynamic chart data in WordPress really easy.

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

For additional 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 easily create eye-catching and mobile-responsive pie charts and graphs in WordPress.

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