How To Add Charts And Graphs To WordPress

You’re probably familiar with the old adage “a picture is worth a thousand words.” This is certainly true when you’re presenting and explaining complex information.

Using charts and graphs can help to break up long text passages, and make statistical data and information much simpler to grasp.

You can use tables to present data, but if you want your audience to try and make sense of complex data with figures, percentages or relationships more easily, then charts and graphs are perfect for helping them visualize the data.

Graphs and charts help explain complex information so people can more easily interpret it!

Need to add charts and graphs to your WordPress pages and posts? This step-by-step tutorial shows you how to use WordPress Visualizer – a simple, easy to use and powerful tool that lets you create, manage and insert beautiful and mobile-responsive charts into your WordPress posts and pages in a few simple steps that:

• Your visitors can interact with
• Lets you upload data from your hard drive or an online data source
• Will resize dynamically for mobile devices

If you plan to display visual data like bar charts, comparison bars or trending graphs containing information that is not going to change (e.g. historical data), a simple method you can use to present this information is to create the charts or graphs using a desktop application, convert these into jpg or png files and then simply insert the image files into your post or page.

Use WordPress Chart & Graph Plugins

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

Visualizer – WP Plugin

Visualizer Plugin URL

You can install the plugin in your WordPress dashboard (explained a little further down the page), or download WordPress Visualizer here:

http://wordpress.org/plugins/visualizer

Visualizer Plugin Description

WordPress Visualizer is a simple, easy to use and powerful tool that allows you to create, manage and embed colorful charts and graphs into your WordPress posts and pages in just a few simple steps.

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 components are needed.

WordPress Visualizer also contains a variety of built-in 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

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 allow you to fully 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 visitors can see your charts and graphs on their mobile devices without requiring the installation of any additional plugins.

Plugin Installation

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

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

Locate the entry in the search results section and click Install Now …

Click OK to proceed …

Activate the plugin after successfully installing it …

You can also activate the plugin in the Plugins area …

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 brings up the plugin’s Visualizer Library options …

After installing 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 publish to your content.

How To Configure The Visualizer Plugin

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

A gallery displaying all of the built-in kinds of charts available will load on your screen.

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

Your graph/chart type will open up in a lightbox.

The next step is to upload a CSV file that contains the data you want to populate your chart or graph with …

When creating your CSV data file, make sure that:

• Your 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 as explained above …

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

Once you have completed this step, 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 data file and click on ‘Open‘ …

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

Depending on the chart or graph type selected, the plugin will display a number of customization options and settings …

The WordPress Visualizer plugin gives you total control over your information, and updates your display in real time …

For example, the pie chart offers many configurable options, including:

• 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 are happy with how your chart or graph looks, click on the ‘Create Chart’ button …

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

Note that each visual element is given a unique ID displayed in a shortcode. As you will see shortly, this lets you add graphs and charts to your posts very quickly …

Graphs and charts added to the Visualizer Library can be accessed by their type …

After adding a new item to the ‘Visualizer Library’, you can edit its details, duplicate it, or trash it …

Visualizer Plugin Usage

After creating a new graph or chart and adding it to the Visualizer Library, it’s quite simple to insert it into your content.

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

This inserts a shortcode into your content …

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

After the page has been published, click ‘View post’ to see the end result …

The graph will show up in the location where you have added the shortcode …

As mentioned earlier, Visualizer also displays responsive visual elements for mobile screens …

As you can see, Visualizer allows you to add and customize dynamic charts and graphs in your content. You can edit your data and the changes will automatically be reflected throughout your website. This makes working with dynamic chart information in WordPress really easy.

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

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 stunning and interactive pie charts and graphs in WordPress.

***

***