How To Add Charts And Graphs To WordPress

You’ve heard the adage “a picture is worth a thousand words.” This certainly applies when you’re trying to present and explain complex data.

Using graphs and charts is useful for making technical or statistical data simpler and easier to understand.

You can present information with tables, but if you want people to try and make sense of complex information with figures, percentages and comparisons more easily, then charts and graphs let you present your information in an intelligent and meaningful manner that can be easily understood.

Charts and graphs help you present complex information so people can more easily understand it!

Need to add charts and graphs to WordPress? This step-by-step tutorial shows you how to use WordPress Visualizer – an easy-to-use and powerful tool that allows you to create, manage and insert interactive graphs into your WordPress posts and pages that:

• Your visitors can interact with
• Allows you to add chart or graph data from your hard drive or a web-based data source
• Resizes dynamically for mobile device screens

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

Use WordPress Chart & Graph Plugins

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

Fortunately, there is a great free WordPress plugin that is simple to install, easy-to-use and allows you to not only create stunning and interactive charts and graphs, it also lets you populate your charts and graphs with updateable data.

Visualizer – WP Plugin

Visualizer Plugin URL

You can install the plugin inside your WordPress dashboard (see further down the page), or download WordPress Visualizer here:

http://wordpress.org/plugins/visualizer

Visualizer Plugin Description

The WordPress Visualizer plugin is a simple, easy to use and powerful tool that allows you to create, manage and insert great-looking and mobile-responsive graphs into your WordPress posts and pages in a few mouse clicks.

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 extra components are required.

Visualizer also contains a variety of built-in 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

The plugin 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. Several options are available for each chart that let you 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 blog or site visitors can see your charts and graphs on their mobile browsers without requiring the installation of any extra software.

How To Install The Plugin

From your WP admin area, select Plugins > Add New from the main admin menu …

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

Locate Visualizer in the search results area and click Install Now …

Click OK to continue …

Activate the plugin after installation is successful …

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 the main menu …

This brings up the plugin’s Visualizer Library screen …

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

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

Visualizer Configuration

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

A page will load on your browser displaying all of the types of graphs available.

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

Your 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, ensure that:

• The first row contains the column headings.
• Your second row contains the series type (e.g. boolean, 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 spreadsheet that comes with the plugin.

Once you have created your CSV file, select the 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 data 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, 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 click ‘Next‘ …

Depending on the chart or graph type you’ve chosen, the plugin displays a range of customization settings and options …

The plugin gives you complete 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 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 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 satisfied with the look of your graph or chart, click on the ‘Create Chart’ button …

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

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

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

After a new item has been added to the ‘Visualizer Library’, you can edit it, duplicate it, or delete it …

Visualizer Usage

After creating a chart or graph and adding it to the Visualizer Library, it’s easy to add it to 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 the content and click on the ‘Add Media‘ button …

Click on ‘Visualizations‘ …

Find the element to be inserted into your content and click the “insert” icon …

This inserts a shortcode into your content …

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

After your post has been updated, click ‘View post’ to see the results …

Your chart or graph will appear in where you have added the shortcode …

As mentioned previously, Visualizer also displays responsive visual elements for mobile device viewing …

As you can see, WordPress Visualizer lets you insert and customize dynamic charts and graphs in your content. You can change your data and your changes will automatically be reflected wherever you have inserted your charts, graphs, comparison bars , etc. in your site. This makes adding dynamic graph data in WordPress really easy.

The plugin developers have created a series of step-by-step tutorials you can use to learn how to edit, customize and use the Visualizer plugin.

For additional 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 easily add colorful and mobile-responsive bar charts and graphs to WordPress.

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