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 trying to present and explain complex information.

Graphs and charts can help to break up content with a disproportionate amount of text, and make data more easily digestible.

You can present data with tables, but if you want people to try and make sense of complex data with numbers, percentages or relationships quickly, then charts and graphs are perfect for helping them visualize the data.

Graphs and charts help present complex data so people can more easily understand it!

If you want to display information visually and dynamically on your WordPress site like charts and graphs, this step-by-step tutorial will show you how to create and add appealing and interactive graphs and charts to your WordPress posts that:

• Your visitors can engage with
• Allows you to add graph or chart data from your hard drive or a web-based source of data
• Will resize dynamically for mobile screens

If you plan to display visual data like bar charts, comparison bars or trending graphs which contain information that is not going to change (e.g. historical data), a simple method you can use to add the information is to create your charts or graphs using an image editing application, convert these into images and then simply add the image files to your site content.

Use WordPress Chart & Graph Plugins

If you want to easily embed dynamic bar charts and graphs into WordPress posts with no coding skills required, the easiest way to do this is to use a plugin.

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

Visualizer – WordPress Plugin

Visualizer Plugin URL

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

http://wordpress.org/plugins/visualizer

Visualizer Plugin Description

Visualizer is a simple, easy to use and powerful plugin for WordPress that allows you to create, manage and embed appealing graphs into your WordPress posts and pages with just 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 additional addons are needed.

WordPress Visualizer also provides a variety of charts 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

Visualizer is 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 let you further 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 web visitors can see your charts and graphs on their mobile browsers without requiring the installation of extra plugins.

How To Install The Visualizer Plugin

Inside your WP administration area, select Plugins > Add New from the navigation sidebar menu …

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

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

Click OK to go ahead …

Activate the plugin after installing it …

You can also activate the plugin in the Plugins page …

Once the plugin has been activated, click on Library …

You can get to the plugin’s ‘library’ screen by selecting Media > Visualizer Library in your admin menu …

This takes you to the plugin’s Visualizer Library options page …

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

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

How To Configure The Visualizer Plugin

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

You will see all of the default kinds of graphs and charts 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 that contains your data …

When creating your CSV data file, ensure that:

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

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

If you are not sure how to format your CSV file, simply refer to the sample file supplied with the plugin.

Next, 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‘ …

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

The plugin imports the data from the CSV file and displays it using the graph/chart type selected …

Upload CSV File From The Web

For a step-by-step tutorial that shows you 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 new data file containing the correct data), and then click ‘Next‘ …

Depending on the chart or graph type selected, the plugin displays a range of customization options and settings …

The WordPress Visualizer 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, including:

• 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 Create Chart …

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

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

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

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

Visualizer Plugin Usage

After creating a new chart or graph and adding it to the Visualizer Library, it’s really very simple to add it to pages or posts.

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 element to be added to your content and click the “insert” icon …

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

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

After updating your page/post, click ‘View post’ to see the end result …

You will see your chart in where you’ve inserted the shortcode …

As mentioned previously, the plugin also displays responsive charts for mobile viewing …

As you can see, WordPress Visualizer lets you add and customize dynamic charts and graphs in your content. You can modify your data and the changes will automatically be reflected throughout your site. This makes working with dynamic graph information in WordPress really efficient.

The developers of this plugin have created a number of step-by-step tutorials you can refer to to learn how to edit, customize and use WordPress 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 add eye-catching and mobile-responsive bar charts and graphs to your WordPress posts with WP Visualizer plugin.

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