How To Add Charts And Graphs To WordPress

You’ve no doubt heard the adage “a picture is worth a thousand words.” This is certainly true when you’re trying to present or explain complex information.

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

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

Graphs and charts help explain complex data so your audience can more easily interpret it!

Need to add charts or graphs to WordPress? This tutorial shows you how to use WordPress Visualizer – a simple, easy to use and powerful tool that lets you create, manage and insert appealing and interactive charts and graphs into your WordPress posts and pages that:

• Your site visitors can engage with
• Allows you to add data from your computer or an online source of data
• Is dynamically responsive for mobile browsers

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 your graphs or charts using an image editing application, convert these into images and then simply add your images to your web content.

Use WordPress Chart & Graph Plugins

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

Fortunately, there is a great free 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.

Visualizer

Plugin URL

You can install the plugin from your WP dashboard (explained further below), or access and download the Visualizer plugin the WP plugin repository using the link below:

http://wordpress.org/plugins/visualizer

Plugin Description

The Visualizer plugin is a simple, easy to use and powerful tool that lets you create, manage and embed appealing and mobile-responsive graphs into your WordPress posts and pages with 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 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

WordPress 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 allow you to customize their look.

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 visitors can see your charts and graphs on their mobile device browsers without requiring the installation of any additional plugins.

How To Install WordPress Visualizer

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

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

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

Click OK to continue …

Activate the plugin after installing it …

You can also activate the plugin in the Plugins section …

After your 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 brings up the plugin’s Visualizer Library screen …

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

The next step is to add the charts and graphs to your library that you will want to display in your posts or pages.

How To Configure Visualizer

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

You will see all of the different types 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 all the data you want to populate your chart or graph with …

When creating your CSV data file, ensure that:

• The first row includes your column headings.
• Your second row includes the series type (e.g. string, date, etc.)

The screenshot below shows how to format your data …

If you are not sure how to format your data CSV, just refer to the sample CSV file supplied 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‘ …

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

The plugin will now import your data and display 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 the data, make sure that all of your 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 you’ve picked, the plugin displays various customization settings and options …

Visualizer gives you full control of your information, and updates your display in real time …

For example, the pie chart offers many 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 happy with the look of your chart or graph, click on the ‘Create Chart’ button …

Your chart or graph will now be added to the ‘Visualizer Library’ section …

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

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

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

Visualizer Usage

Once you’ve created a new element and added it to the Library, it’s very easy to insert it into your posts and pages.

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‘ …

Find 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 …

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

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

The item will display in where you have inserted the shortcode …

As mentioned previously, the plugin also displays responsive elements for mobile screens …

As you can see, WordPress Visualizer lets you 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 makes managing interactive graph information in WordPress very easy.

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

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

• WordPress Visualizer – Additional Tutorials

Congratulations! Now you know how to easily add eye-catching and dynamic bar charts and graphs to your WordPress pages with WordPress Visualizer plugin.

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