How To Add Charts And Graphs To WordPress

No doubt you’re familiar with the old saying “a picture is worth a thousand words.” This is certainly true when you are presenting and explaining complex information.

Charts and graphs are a great way to break up content with a disproportionate amount of text, and make technical or statistical data a lot simpler to understand.

You can present data with tables, but if you want your audience to try and interpret complex data with numbers, percentages and relationships easily, then charts and graphs allow you to present information in an intelligent and meaningful way that can be quickly understood.

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

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

• Your site visitors can interact with
• Allows you to upload chart or graph data from your hard drive or an online source of data
• Dynamically resizes for mobile device screens

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

Use WordPress Chart & Graph Plugins

If you want to easily add interactive bars 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 WordPress plugin that is simple to install, easy-to-use and allows you to not only create beautiful and dynamic charts and graphs, it also lets you populate your charts and graphs with updateable content.

WordPress Plugin: Visualizer

Visualizer Plugin URL

You can install the plugin in your WordPress dashboard (explained a little further down the page), or download the Visualizer plugin the WP free plugin repository using the link below:

http://wordpress.org/plugins/visualizer

Visualizer Plugin Description

The Visualizer plugin is a simple, easy to use and powerful tool that lets you create, manage and embed attractive and mobile-responsive charts into your WordPress posts and pages in just 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 plugins are required.

WordPress Visualizer also comes with 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

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 your site’s design. A number of options are available for each chart that allow you to 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 web browsers without requiring the installation of any extra software.

Plugin Installation

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

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

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

Click OK to proceed …

Activate the plugin after installation is successful …

You can also activate the plugin in the Plugins page …

Once your plugin has been activated, click on Library …

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

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

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

Your next step is to add the charts and graphs to your library that you plan to publish to your content.

Visualizer Plugin Configuration

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

A gallery displaying all the 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 …

Your graph/chart type will open up in a new window.

The next step is to upload a CSV file with your data …

When creating your CSV data file, ensure that:

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

The screenshot below shows how to format your data correctly …

If you are not sure how to format your data CSV, just download the sample CSV file that comes with the plugin.

Once you have created your CSV file, select your data source (‘From Computer’ or ‘From Web’) in the ‘Upload CSV File’ section.

Upload CSV File From Computer

To upload your CSV file from your hard drive select ‘From Computer‘ …

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

The plugin imports the data from the CSV file and displays 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 your data, make sure that all of the 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 have picked, the plugin displays various customization settings and options …

Visualizer gives you complete control over your information, and updates your display in real time …

For example, the pie chart offers various 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’re satisfied 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 shortly, this allows you to add charts and graphs to your posts and pages quickly and easily …

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

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

Visualizer Usage

After creating a graph or chart and adding it to the Visualizer Library, adding it to a post or page is really simple.

First, create a new post or page (or open an existing one) …

Next, place your mouse cursor where you would like to insert your visual element into your content and click on the ‘Add Media‘ button …

Click on ‘Visualizations‘ …

Find the element you want to add to your content and click on the “insert” icon …

This will add a shortcode into your content …

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

After publishing the page/post, click ‘View post’ to see the result …

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

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

As you can see, Visualizer 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 site. This is very convenient if you’re working with dynamic chart data in WordPress.

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

For additional tutorials on editing, copying, deleting and adding data to your charts, visit the website below:

• WordPress Visualizer – Additional Tutorials

Congratulations! Now you know how to add eye-catching and interactive charts and graphs to your WordPress pages.

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