How To Add Charts And Graphs To WordPress

You’ve no doubt heard the adage “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 great for breaking up long chunks of text, and making data easier to digest.

You can present information using tables, but if you want people to try and interpret complex data with numbers, trends or relationships quickly, then graphs and charts let you present your information in a meaningful and intelligent manner that can be easily processed.

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

Need to add charts and graphs to WordPress? This tutorial shows you how to use WP Visualizer – an easy-to-use and powerful plugin that allows you to create, manage and embed appealing and interactive charts and graphs into your WordPress posts and pages in a few mouse clicks that:

• Your visitors can engage with
• Lets you upload data from your hard drive or a web-based data source
• Dynamically resizes for mobile browsing

If you are displaying visual data like pie charts, comparison graphs or trending graphs containing static information (e.g. historical data), a simple method you can use to display the information is to create the graphs or charts using a desktop application, convert these into .jpg or .png files and then simply add your files and an image to your pages.

Use WordPress Chart & Graph Plugins

If you want to easily add interactive bar charts 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 that is simple to install, easy-to-use and allows you to not only create great-looking and dynamic charts and graphs, it also lets you populate your charts and graphs with dynamic content.

Visualizer

Visualizer URL

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

http://wordpress.org/plugins/visualizer

Plugin Description

WP Visualizer is a simple, easy to use and powerful WordPress plugin that lets you create, manage and insert colorful and mobile-responsive charts and graphs into your WordPress posts and pages in 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 extra add-ons are needed.

Visualizer also contains a variety of charts that are optimized to address 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 site’s design. A number of options are available for each chart that allow you to 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 visitors can see your charts and graphs on their mobile device browsers without requiring the installation of any extra software.

How To Install WP Visualizer

From your WP dashboard, select Plugins > Add New from the navigation sidebar menu …

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

Locate Visualizer in the search results section 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 section …

Once the 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 options page …

When you first install the plugin, the library will contain no charts.

The next step is to add the charts and graphs to your library that you plan to publish to your posts and pages.

Visualizer Configuration

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

An image gallery displaying all of the types of graphs and charts 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 selected graph/chart type will pop up in a lightbox.

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

The screenshot below shows how to format your data as per the requirements above …

If you are unsure about how to format your CSV file, just refer to the sample provided with the plugin.

Once you have done this, 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‘ …

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

The plugin will import the 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 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 the information is correct (if not, click on the ‘Back’ button and reupload a data file with the right data), and then click ‘Next‘ …

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

The WordPress Visualizer plugin gives you full control over 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 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 how your chart or graph appears, click on the ‘Create Chart’ button …

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

Note that each element is given a unique ID displayed as a shortcode. As you will see in just a moment, this allows you to add graphs and charts to your posts and pages easily and quickly …

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

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

Plugin Usage

After creating a new element and adding it to Visualizer, it’s very easy to add it to posts or 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 the content and click on Add Media …

Click on ‘Visualizations‘ …

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

This inserts a shortcode into your content …

After you have added the shortcode, click on Publish to publish (or update) your content …

Once the post/page has been published, click ‘View post’ to see it …

Your post or page displays the item in your content …

As mentioned previously, the plugin also displays responsive charts and graphs for mobile browsers …

As you can see, the Visualizer plugin 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 working with dynamic chart data in WordPress really efficient.

The developers of this plugin 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 stunning and mobile-responsive pie charts and graphs to your WordPress pages.

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