How To Add Charts And Graphs To WordPress

You’re probably familiar with the old adage “a picture is worth a thousand words.” This is certainly true when you are trying to present and explain data.

Using graphs and charts is a great way to break up technical or boring information, and make statistical data more easily digestible.

You can present information using tables, but if you want your audience to try and interpret complex data with numbers, trends or relationships more easily, then charts and graphs are perfect for helping them visualize your information.

Charts and graphs help you explain complex information so your audience can more easily interpret it!

Need to add charts or graphs to your WordPress posts and pages? This tutorial shows you how to use WordPress Visualizer – an easy-to-use and powerful tool that lets you create, manage and insert colorful and interactive graphs into your WordPress posts and pages that:

• Your visitors can interact with
• Lets you add chart or graph data from your computer or an online data source
• Dynamically resizes for mobile device users

If you are displaying visual data like bar charts, comparison bars or trending graphs that contain static information (e.g. historical data), a simple method you can use to add this data is to create your charts or graphs using an image editing application, convert these into jpg and png files and then simply insert the image files into your posts or pages.

Use WordPress Chart & Graph Plugins

If you want to embed dynamic bar charts and graphs into 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 sites that is simple to install, easy-to-use and allows you to not only create beautiful and mobile-responsive charts and graphs, it also lets you populate your charts and graphs with updatable information.

Visualizer

Visualizer URL

You can install the plugin in your WordPress dashboard (we show you how to do this further below), or download Visualizer here:

http://wordpress.org/plugins/visualizer

Visualizer Plugin Description

Visualizer is a simple, easy to use and powerful plugin that allows you to create, manage and embed stunning and mobile-responsive charts and graphs into your WordPress posts and pages in 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 components are needed.

WordPress Visualizer also provides a variety of charts 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 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 browsers without having to install any additional software.

Plugin Installation

Inside your WordPress dashboard, select Plugins > Add New from the dashboard menu …

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

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

Click OK to go ahead …

Activate the plugin after successfully installing it …

You can also activate the plugin in the Plugins area …

After your 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 takes you to the plugin’s Visualizer Library section …

After installing the plugin, this section will be empty.

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

Plugin Configuration

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

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

Select the chart or graph 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 that contains all the data you would like to populate your chart or graph with …

When creating your CSV data file, ensure that:

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

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

If you are not sure how to format your CSV file, simply download the sample CSV file that comes with the plugin.

Once you have completed this step, 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 click on ‘Open‘ …

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

Upload CSV File From The Web

For a tutorial that shows you how to create, save and publish data to a Visualizer chart or graph using Google Spreadsheet, see the article below:

• How To Populate Data Using Google Spreadsheet

After importing your data, check 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 displays a number of customization settings and 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 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 on the ‘Create Chart’ button …

The chart or graph will be added to your Visualizer ‘Library’ …

Note that every element is given a unique ID displayed in a shortcode. As you will see very soon, this lets you embed charts and graphs into your WordPress pages and posts quickly and easily …

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

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

Visualizer Usage

After creating a new chart or graph and adding it to Visualizer, adding it to posts and pages is very simple.

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 your content and click on Add Media …

Click on ‘Visualizations‘ …

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

This will add a shortcode into your content …

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

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

Your graph will appear in your content …

As mentioned earlier, the plugin also displays responsive graphs and charts for mobile device viewing …

As you can see, Visualizer allows you to add and customize dynamic charts and graphs in your content. You can update your data and your changes will automatically be reflected throughout your site. This makes adding interactive graph data in WordPress really efficient.

The developers of this plugin 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, visit the site below:

• WordPress Visualizer – Additional Tutorials

Congratulations! Now you know how to insert appealing and dynamic bar charts and graphs into WordPress.

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