How To Add Charts And Graphs To WordPress

No doubt you’re familiar with the old adage “a picture is worth a thousand words.” This is certainly true when you are presenting and explaining complex information.

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

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

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

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

• Your site visitors can engage with
• Allows you to add graph or chart data from your hard drive or an online source of data
• Will dynamically resize for mobile browsing

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

Use WordPress Chart & Graph Plugins

If you want to create dynamic bar charts and pie graphs in 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 interactive graphs and charts, it also lets you populate your charts and graphs with updateable data.

Visualizer Plugin For WordPress

Plugin URL

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

http://wordpress.org/plugins/visualizer

Visualizer Description

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

The plugin also comes with a variety of built-in 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 also 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 fully customize their look and feel.

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 The Visualizer Plugin

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

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

Locate the item in the search results section and click Install Now …

Click OK to proceed …

Activate the plugin …

You can also activate the plugin in the Plugins section …

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 admin menu …

This brings up the plugin’s Visualizer Library options page …

After installing the plugin, this section will be empty.

The next step is to add the charts and graphs to your library that you will want to insert into your content.

Visualizer Configuration

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

A page will appear in your screen with all of the kinds of graphs available.

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

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

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

When creating your CSV data file, make sure that:

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

The screenshot below shows how to format your data as explained above …

If you are unsure about how to format your data CSV, just study the sample 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 the CSV file from your hard drive 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 selected …

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

Depending on the chart or graph type selected, the plugin will display various customization settings …

The plugin gives you full control over your information, 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 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 happy with the way your graph or chart appears, click on the ‘Create Chart’ button …

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

Note that new elements are given a unique ID displayed as a shortcode. As you will see shortly, this allows you to add graphs and charts to your WordPress pages easily …

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

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

Plugin Usage

After you have created a new element and added it to Visualizer, it’s really very simple to insert it into a 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 the content and click on Add Media …

Click on ‘Visualizations‘ …

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

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

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

Once the page has been updated, click ‘View post’ to see the results …

The graph will show up in the content …

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

As you can see, Visualizer allows you to insert and customize dynamic charts and graphs in your content. You can update your data and the changes will automatically be reflected throughout your website. This is a real time-saving benefit of the plugin if you’re working with interactive graph data in WordPress.

The developers of this plugin have created a number of tutorials you can refer to for ways to edit, customize and use WordPress Visualizer.

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

• WordPress Visualizer – Additional Tutorials

Congratulations! Now you know how to easily add eye-catching and mobile-responsive charts and graphs to WordPress with WordPress Visualizer.

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