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 data.

Using graphs and charts is useful for breaking up long passage of technical information, and making data more easily digestible.

You can present data with tables, but if you want your audience to try and make sense of complex data with figures, trends and comparisons easily, then charts and graphs are perfect for helping them visualize your information.

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

If you need to present information visually and dynamically on your WordPress site using charts and graphs, this tutorial will show you exactly how to create appealing and updatable charts and graphs to your WordPress posts that:

• Your web visitors can interact with
• Lets you upload graph or chart data from your hard drive or a web-based source of data
• Will dynamically resize for mobile browsing

If you plan to display visual data like pie charts, comparison bars or trending graphs which contain information that is not going to change (e.g. historical data), a simple method you can use to display the information is to create the charts or graphs using an image editing application, convert these into .jpg or .png files and then simply add your images to your posts or pages.

Use WordPress Chart & Graph Plugins

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

Visualizer – WP Plugin

Visualizer URL

You can install the plugin in your WordPress dashboard (see a little further below), or download WP Visualizer here:

http://wordpress.org/plugins/visualizer

Visualizer Plugin Description

WP Visualizer is a simple, easy to use and powerful WP plugin that allows you to create, manage and insert eye-catching and mobile-responsive charts into your WordPress posts and pages in 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 additional plugins are needed.

Visualizer also contains 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

Visualizer is 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. A number of 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 blog or site visitors can see your charts and graphs on their mobile device browsers without requiring the installation of any additional plugins.

How To Install The Visualizer Plugin

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

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

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

Click OK to continue …

Activate the plugin …

You can also activate the plugin in the Plugins section …

Once the plugin has been activated, click on Library …

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

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

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 will want to publish to your content.

How To Configure The Plugin

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

A gallery displaying all of the different kinds of charts available will load on your screen.

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

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

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

When creating your CSV data file, ensure that:

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

The screenshot below shows how to format your data …

If you are not sure how to format your data CSV, just refer to the sample spreadsheet supplied with the plugin.

Next, 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‘ …

Use the browser to locate and select your file and click on ‘Open‘ …

The plugin imports the data and displays it using the graph/chart type selected …

Upload CSV File From The Web

For a step-by-step tutorial that shows you 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 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 you have selected, the plugin displays a range of customization options …

The plugin gives you full control of your information, and updates your display in real time …

For example, the pie chart offers many 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 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 how your chart or graph is looking, click Create Chart …

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

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

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

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

Visualizer Plugin Usage

Once you have created a chart or graph and added it to the Visualizer Library, adding it to posts and pages is quite 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‘ …

Select the element to be added to your content and click on the “insert” icon …

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

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

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

You will see the chart in your content …

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

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

The plugin developers have created a series of step-by-step tutorials you can refer to to learn how to edit, customize and use WordPress Visualizer.

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

• WordPress Visualizer – Additional Tutorials

Congratulations! Now you know how to add beautiful and dynamic pie charts and graphs to WordPress with WordPress Visualizer plugin.

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