How To Add Charts And Graphs To WordPress

You’ve no doubt heard the saying “a picture is worth a thousand words.” This certainly applies when you’re presenting or explaining data.

Graphs and charts are a great way to break up long text passages, and make data more easily digestible.

You can use tables to present data, but if you want people to try and make sense of complex information with numbers, trends or relationships quickly, then graphs and charts let you present the data in a meaningful and intelligent way that can be quickly understood.

Graphs and charts help you present complex data so your audience can more easily understand it!

If you need to learn how to display dynamic visual content on your WordPress site using graphs and charts, this step-by-step tutorial will show you exactly how to create appealing and updatable charts to WordPress that:

• Your visitors can engage with
• Lets you add data from your computer or an online source of data
• Dynamically resizes for viewing on mobile devices

If you are displaying visual data like bar charts, comparison graphs or trending graphs containing static information (e.g. historical data), an easier way to add this information is to create your charts or graphs using an image editing application, convert these into images and then simply insert the files and an image into your page or post.

Use WordPress Chart & Graph Plugins

If you want to easily embed interactive bars and pie charts into WordPress 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 stunning and mobile-responsive graphs and charts, it also lets you populate your charts and graphs with updateable content.

WP Plugin: Visualizer

Plugin URL

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

http://wordpress.org/plugins/visualizer

Visualizer Description

WP Visualizer is a simple, easy to use and powerful tool that allows you to create, manage and insert colorful and interactive graphs and charts into your WordPress posts and pages with 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 add-ons are needed.

WordPress Visualizer also provides 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

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. Several options are available for each chart that let you fully customize their look and feel.

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 device browsers without requiring the installation of additional software.

How To Install The Visualizer Plugin

From your WordPress administration area, select Plugins > Add New from the main menu …

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

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

Click OK to go ahead …

Activate the plugin …

You can also activate the plugin in the Plugins section …

Once your plugin has been activated, click on Library …

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

This brings up the plugin’s Visualizer Library page …

When you first install the plugin, this section will be empty.

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

How To Configure The Plugin

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

A page will appear in your browser displaying all of the kinds of graphs available.

Select the type of graph or chart 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 your data …

When creating your CSV data file, make sure that:

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

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

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

Once you have done this, select your 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 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

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

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

Visualizer gives you complete control of your chart or graph, 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’re satisfied with the look of your chart or graph, click Create Chart …

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

Note that each visual element is given a unique ID displayed in a shortcode. As you will see very soon, this lets you easily insert charts and graphs into your content …

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

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

Visualizer Usage

After you have created a element and added it to Visualizer, it’s very easy 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 the content and click on Add Media …

Click on ‘Visualizations‘ …

Find the graph or chart you want to insert into your content and click the “insert” icon …

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

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

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

You will see your chart or graph in the location you specified …

As mentioned previously, the plugin also displays responsive graphs and charts for mobile browsing …

As you can see, WordPress Visualizer lets you add and customize dynamic charts and graphs in your content. You can change your data and the changes will automatically be reflected throughout your website. This is a real time-saver if you’re adding dynamic graph data in WordPress.

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

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

• WordPress Visualizer – Additional Tutorials

Congratulations! Now you know how to easily create great-looking and interactive charts and graphs in WordPress.

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