How To Add Charts And Graphs To WordPress

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

Using charts and graphs is useful for breaking up long text passages, and making technical or statistical data simpler to digest.

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

Charts and graphs help you present complex data so your audience can more easily interpret it!

If you need to display information visually and dynamically on your WordPress site using graphs and charts, this step-by-step tutorial will show you exactly how to create and add eye-catching and updateable charts and graphs to your WordPress posts that:

• Your site visitors can interact with
• Allows you to add data from your computer or an online source of data
• Is dynamically responsive for mobile browsers

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

Use WordPress Chart & Graph Plugins

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

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

Visualizer Plugin For WordPress

Visualizer URL

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

http://wordpress.org/plugins/visualizer

Visualizer Plugin Description

WordPress Visualizer is an easy-to-use and powerful tool that lets you create, manage and embed dynamic graphs into your WordPress posts and pages with just a few mouse clicks.

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 required.

The plugin 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 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. Various options are available for each chart that let you 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 having to install any additional plugins.

Plugin Installation

Inside your WP dashboard, 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 item in the search results section and click the “Install Now” button …

Click OK to continue …

Activate the plugin after installing it …

You can also activate the plugin in the Plugins area …

After your plugin has been activated, click on Library …

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

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

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

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

How To Configure Visualizer

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

A visual gallery displaying all the kinds of charts available will come up on your screen.

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

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

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

When creating your CSV data file, make sure that:

• Your first row contains the column headings.
• The second row contains the series type (e.g. string, datetime, etc.)

The screenshot below shows how to format your data …

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

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

The plugin imports the data and displays it using the graph/chart type you have 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, check that all of the information is correct (if not, click on the ‘Back’ button and reupload a new data file with the correct data), and click ‘Next‘ …

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

The plugin gives you complete control of your chart or graph, and updates your display in real time …

For example, the pie chart offers various 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 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 satisfied with the way 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 every new element is given a unique ID displayed in a shortcode. As you will see very soon, this allows you to insert charts and graphs into your WordPress posts easily …

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

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

Visualizer Plugin Usage

After creating a new element and adding it to the Library, it’s 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 would like to insert your visual element into your content and click on the ‘Add Media‘ button …

Click on ‘Visualizations‘ …

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

This will add a shortcode into your content …

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

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

Your page or post displays your graph or chart in the content …

As mentioned previously, Visualizer also displays responsive charts and graphs for mobile screens …

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 throughout your site. This is great if you’re adding interactive graph information in WordPress.

The developers of this plugin have created a series of tutorials you can refer to for ways to edit, customize and use the Visualizer plugin for WordPress.

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

• WordPress Visualizer – Additional Tutorials

Congratulations! Now you know how to easily add beautiful and interactive bar charts and graphs to your WordPress content.

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