How To Add Charts And Graphs To WordPress

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

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

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 graphs and charts are perfect for helping them understand your data.

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

Need to add charts or graphs to your WordPress posts and pages? This step-by-step tutorial shows you how to use WP Visualizer – a simple, easy to use and powerful tool that allows you to create, manage and insert colorful and interactive charts and graphs into your WordPress posts and pages with just a few simple steps that:

• Your site visitors can interact with
• Lets you add data from your computer or an online source of data
• Is fully responsive for mobile screens

If you plan to display visual data like pie charts, comparison charts or trending graphs which contain 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 images and then simply add the images to your post or page.

Use WordPress Chart & Graph Plugins

If you want to add dynamic bars 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 free plugin for WordPress that is simple to install, easy-to-use and allows you to not only create great-looking and interactive charts and graphs, it also lets you populate your charts and graphs with dynamic information.

Visualizer Plugin For WordPress

Visualizer Plugin URL

You can install the plugin in your WP dashboard (see further down the page), or download WP Visualizer from the link below:

http://wordpress.org/plugins/visualizer

Plugin Description

WP Visualizer is a simple, easy to use and powerful tool that lets you create, manage and embed attractive and mobile-responsive charts and graphs into your WordPress posts and pages in just a few simple steps.

The plugin 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 extra add-ons are needed.

Visualizer also provides a variety of built-in optimized for 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 further 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 site visitors can see your charts and graphs on their mobile web browsers without requiring the installation of extra software.

Plugin Installation

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

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

Locate the plugin in the search results section and click Install Now …

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 get to the plugin’s ‘library’ screen by choosing Media > Visualizer Library in the dashboard menu …

This brings up the plugin’s Visualizer Library settings …

After installing the plugin, this section will be empty.

Your next step is to add the charts and graphs to your library that you plan to insert into your posts and pages.

How To Configure The Visualizer Plugin

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

An image gallery displaying all the different kinds of charts and graphs available will load on your screen.

Select the type of chart or graph 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 that contains your data …

When creating your CSV data file, make sure that:

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

The screenshot below shows how to format your data correctly …

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

Once you have done this, select the 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 hard drive select ‘From Computer‘ …

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

The plugin will now import the data from the CSV file and display it using the graph/chart type selected …

Upload CSV File From The Web

For a tutorial that explains 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 selected, the plugin will display a number 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 are happy with the look of your graph or chart, click Create Chart …

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

Note that new visual elements are given a unique ID displayed in a shortcode. As you will see very soon, this allows you to insert graphs and charts into your pages and posts easily and quickly …

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

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

Visualizer Plugin Usage

Once you’ve created a new chart or graph and added it to the Library, adding it to a post or page 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 the content and click on Add Media …

Click on ‘Visualizations‘ …

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

This inserts a shortcode for the element into your content …

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

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

You will see your item in the content …

As mentioned previously, Visualizer also displays responsive visual elements for mobile viewing …

As you can see, the Visualizer plugin allows you to add and customize dynamic charts and graphs in your content. You can change your data and your changes will automatically be reflected throughout your site. This makes managing interactive chart information in WordPress very efficient.

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

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

• WordPress Visualizer – Additional Tutorials

Congratulations! Now you know how to insert beautiful charts and graphs into your WordPress pages with WP Visualizer plugin.

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