How To Add Charts And Graphs To WordPress

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

Using charts and graphs is great for breaking up long passage of technical information, and making statistical data much simpler to understand.

You can use tables to present information, but if you want your audience to try and make sense of complex information with numbers, trends and relationships easily, then graphs and charts are perfect for helping them interpret your information.

Charts and graphs help you explain complex data so people can more easily interpret it!

If you need to learn how to display information visually and dynamically on your WordPress site like charts and graphs, this step-by-step tutorial will show you exactly how to create eye-catching and updatable charts to your pages that:

• Your web visitors can engage with
• Allows you to add chart or graph data from your computer or an online data source
• Dynamically resizes for mobile browsers

If you are displaying visual data like pie charts, comparison charts or trending graphs that contain static information (e.g. historical data), an easier way to present this information is to create your charts or graphs using a desktop application, convert these into images and then simply add the image to your pages.

Use WordPress Chart & Graph Plugins

If you want to easily create interactive bar charts and pie charts in WordPress pages with no coding skills required, the easiest way to do this is to use a plugin.

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

Visualizer Plugin For WordPress

Visualizer URL

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

http://wordpress.org/plugins/visualizer

Plugin Description

The WordPress Visualizer plugin is a simple, easy to use and powerful tool that allows you to create, manage and embed great-looking graphs and charts into your WordPress posts and pages in 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 components are required.

Visualizer also comes with a variety of charts 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

Visualizer is a flexible and customizable plugin, allowing you to use Google Chart Tools with their default setting, or configure an extensive set of options to match your web design. Several options are available for each chart that let you 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 visitors can see your charts and graphs on their mobile devices without having to install any additional software.

How To Install WordPress Visualizer

Inside your WP administration area, select Plugins > Add New from the dashboard menu …

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

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

Click OK to proceed …

Activate the plugin …

You can also activate the plugin in the Plugins area …

After the plugin has been activated, click on Library …

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

This brings up the plugin’s Visualizer Library settings page …

After installing the plugin, the library section will be empty.

The next step is to add add charts and graphs to the plugin library.

How To Configure Visualizer

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

You will be presented with all of the different kinds of charts available.

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 containing your data …

When creating your CSV data file, make sure that:

• Your first row contains your column headings.
• Your second row contains the series type (e.g. string, datetime, 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, just refer to the sample file supplied 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 and data from your computer select ‘From Computer‘ …

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

The plugin imports the data from the CSV file and displays it using the graph/chart type chosen …

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 your data, make sure that all of the 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 picked, the plugin displays a range of customization options …

The WordPress Visualizer plugin gives you full control over your chart or graph, 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 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 how your graph or chart appears, click on the ‘Create Chart’ button …

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

Note that every visual element is given a unique ID displayed as a shortcode. As you will see shortly, this allows you to insert graphs and charts into your WordPress content quickly …

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

After a new element has been added to the ‘Visualizer Library’, you can edit its details, clone it, or delete it …

Visualizer Plugin Usage

After creating a chart or graph and adding it to the Visualizer Library, it’s easy to insert it into pages or posts.

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

This will place a shortcode into your content …

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

Once your post has been updated, click ‘View post’ to see the result …

You will see your chart in the content …

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

As you can see, Visualizer lets you insert and customize dynamic charts and graphs in your content. You can modify your data and the changes will automatically be reflected wherever you have inserted your charts, graphs, comparison bars , etc. in your site. This makes managing interactive graph data in WordPress really easy.

The developers of this plugin have created a number of step-by-step 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, refer to the website below:

• WordPress Visualizer – Additional Tutorials

Congratulations! Now you know how to create colorful and mobile-responsive pie charts and graphs in WordPress with WP Visualizer plugin.

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