How To Add Charts And Graphs To WordPress

No doubt you’re familiar with the adage “a picture is worth a thousand words.” This certainly applies when you’re presenting or explaining data.

Charts and graphs help to make technical or statistical data much simpler to grasp.

You can present data with tables, but if you want people to try and make sense of complex data with figures, percentages or relationships quickly, then charts and graphs let you present your information in a meaningful and intelligent manner that can be quickly understood.

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

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

• Your visitors can engage with
• Allows you to upload chart or graph data from your hard drive or an online source of data
• Is responsive for mobile viewers

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

Use WordPress Chart & Graph Plugins

If you want to insert interactive bars and pie graphs into WordPress posts and pages 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 interactive charts and graphs, it also lets you populate your charts and graphs with updatable information.

Visualizer

Plugin URL

You can install the plugin inside your WordPress dashboard (we will show you how to do this further below), or download WP Visualizer here:

http://wordpress.org/plugins/visualizer

Plugin Description

The WordPress Visualizer plugin is a simple, easy to use and powerful tool that lets you create, manage and embed appealing and dynamic graphs and charts 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 add-ons are required.

The plugin also provides a variety of charts optimized for all 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. Several 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 having to install additional plugins.

How To Install Visualizer

Inside your WP dashboard, select Plugins > Add New from the main menu …

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

Locate the entry in the search results area 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 also get to the plugin’s ‘library’ screen by selecting Media > Visualizer Library from the dashboard menu …

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

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 insert into your pages and posts.

Visualizer Plugin Configuration

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

An image gallery displaying all of the default kinds of graphs available will load on your screen.

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

The selected graph/chart type will open up in a lightbox.

The next step is to upload a CSV file with the data you want your chart or graph to be populated with …

When creating your CSV data file, ensure that:

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

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

If you are unsure about how to format your CSV file, just study the sample CSV file that comes 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 and data from your hard drive select ‘From Computer‘ …

Use the browser to locate and select your data 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

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

Depending on the chart or graph type you’ve selected, the plugin displays a number of customization 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 various 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 are happy with the look of your graph or chart, click on the ‘Create Chart’ button …

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

Note that every new element is given a unique ID displayed as a shortcode. As you will see shortly, this lets you add charts and graphs to your WordPress posts and pages quickly and easily …

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

After an element has been added to the ‘Visualizer Library’, you can edit its details, clone it, or delete it …

Visualizer Usage

After creating a graph or chart and adding it to the Library, adding it to your content is very simple.

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 Add Media …

Click on ‘Visualizations‘ …

Select the chart or graph to be inserted into your content and click the “insert” icon …

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

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

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

Your graph or chart will show in the location you specified …

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

As you can see, the Visualizer plugin allows you to add and customize dynamic charts and graphs in your content. You can change your data and your changes will automatically be reflected throughout your website. This makes adding interactive graph data in WordPress very easy.

The developers of this plugin have created a series of tutorials you can use to learn how to edit, customize and use the Visualizer plugin for WordPress.

For 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 create beautiful and dynamic bar charts and graphs in WordPress with WP Visualizer.

***

***