How To Add Charts And Graphs To WordPress

You’ve heard the adage “a picture is worth a thousand words.” This certainly applies when you’re presenting or explaining data.

Using charts and graphs is useful for breaking up technical and boring content, and making data more easily digestible.

You can use tables to present information, but if you want your audience to try and interpret complex data with numbers, percentages and relationships more easily, then charts and graphs let you present your data in a meaningful and intelligent manner that can be quickly processed.

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

If you need to present information visually and dynamically on your WordPress site using charts and graphs, this tutorial will show you how to create and add attractive and interactive charts to your WP posts that:

• Your site visitors can engage with
• Allows you to add chart or graph data from your hard drive or a web-based source of data
• Dynamically resizes for viewing on mobile devices

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 to display the data is to create your graphs or charts using a desktop application, convert these into images and then simply insert the image files into your web content.

Use WordPress Chart & Graph Plugins

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

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

WordPress Plugin: Visualizer

Plugin URL

You can install the plugin from your WP dashboard (explained further down the page), or access and download the Visualizer plugin here:

http://wordpress.org/plugins/visualizer

Plugin Description

WordPress Visualizer is a simple, easy to use and powerful tool that lets you create, manage and embed beautiful graphs into your WordPress posts and pages with 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 additional addons are needed.

Visualizer also contains a variety of built-in 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

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 web design. A number of options are available for each chart that allow you to fully 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 blog or site visitors can see your charts and graphs on their mobile device browsers without having to install any extra software.

How To Install WordPress Visualizer

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

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

Locate the item in the search results screen and click Install Now …

Click OK to go ahead …

Activate the plugin …

You can also activate the plugin in the Plugins area …

After the plugin has been activated, click on Library …

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

This takes you to 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 plan to display in your posts and pages.

How To Configure The Visualizer Plugin

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

You will see all of the different kinds of graphs available.

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

The graph/chart type will pop 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:

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

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

If you are unsure about how to format your data CSV, simply download the sample CSV file provided 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 your CSV file from your computer select ‘From Computer‘ …

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

The plugin will now import your data from the CSV file and display it using the graph/chart type 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 the data, make sure that all of the information is correct (if not, click on the ‘Back’ button and reupload a data file containing the right data), and click ‘Next‘ …

Depending on the chart or graph type you’ve selected, the plugin will display a range of customization 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, such as:

• 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 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 way your graph or chart looks, click Create Chart …

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

Note that new elements are given a unique ID displayed as a shortcode. As you will see very soon, this lets you embed charts and graphs into your content very easily …

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

After a chart or graph has been added to the ‘Visualizer Library’, you can edit its details, clone it, or trash it …

Visualizer Usage

After creating a element and adding it to Visualizer, it’s quite simple to insert it into a post or page.

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‘ …

Select the element you want to insert into your content and click the “insert” icon …

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

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

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

You will see the chart in the location you specified …

As mentioned earlier, the plugin also displays responsive graphs for mobile users …

As you can see, WordPress Visualizer lets you add and customize dynamic charts and graphs in your content. You can update your data and the changes will automatically be reflected wherever you have inserted your charts, graphs, comparison bars , etc. in your site. This is great if you’re adding interactive graph information in WordPress.

The plugin developers 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, go to the website below:

• WordPress Visualizer – Additional Tutorials

Congratulations! Now you know how to create appealing and mobile-responsive bar charts and graphs in WordPress with WordPress Visualizer.

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