How To Add Charts And Graphs To WordPress

You’ve heard the adage “a picture is worth a thousand words.” This is certainly true when you are presenting and explaining complex data.

Charts and graphs can help to break up long and difficult text, and make technical or statistical data more easily digestible.

You can present information with tables, but if you want people to try and make sense of complex information with numbers, percentages or relationships more easily, then graphs and charts allow you to present the data in an intelligent and meaningful manner that can be quickly processed.

Graphs and charts help present complex information so people can more easily interpret it!

Need to add charts and graphs to WordPress? This tutorial shows you how to use WP Visualizer – a simple, easy to use and powerful WP plugin that allows you to create, manage and insert eye-catching and dynamic graphs into your WordPress posts and pages with just a few mouse clicks that:

• Your site visitors can interact with
• Lets you upload data from your computer or a web-based source of data
• Dynamically resizes for viewing on mobile devices

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

Use WordPress Chart & Graph Plugins

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

Visualizer – WordPress Plugin

Visualizer Plugin URL

You can install the plugin from your WordPress dashboard (see a little further down the page), or download WordPress Visualizer here:

http://wordpress.org/plugins/visualizer

Plugin Description

Visualizer is an easy-to-use and powerful WP plugin that allows you to create, manage and insert great-looking and dynamic graphs into your WordPress posts and pages with a few mouse clicks.

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 add-ons are required.

Visualizer also comes with a variety of built-in 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 site’s design. Various options are available for each chart that allow you to 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 visitors can see your charts and graphs on their mobile web browsers without having to install additional software.

Plugin Installation

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

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

Locate the item in the search results screen and click the “Install Now” button …

Click OK to proceed …

Activate the plugin after installing it …

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 main menu …

This brings up the plugin’s Visualizer Library section …

After installing the plugin, this section will be empty.

The next step is to add the charts and graphs to your library that you plan to display in your pages or posts.

Visualizer Plugin Configuration

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

You will see all of the default types of graphs and charts available.

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

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

The next step is to upload a CSV file that contains all the data you would like your chart or graph to be populated with …

When creating your CSV data file, ensure that:

• Your first row contains your column headings.
• Your second row contains the series type (e.g. number, 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, simply download the sample that comes with the plugin.

Once you have completed this step, select the 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‘ …

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

The plugin imports your data 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, see the article below:

• How To Populate Data Using Google Spreadsheet

After importing the data, make sure that all of your information is correct (if not, click on the ‘Back’ button and reupload a new data file with the right data), and click ‘Next‘ …

Depending on the chart or graph type you have picked, the plugin displays a number of customization options and settings …

The WordPress Visualizer plugin gives you complete control over your information, 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 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 look of your chart or graph, click Create Chart …

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

Note that every new element is given a unique ID displayed in a shortcode. As you will see in a moment, this lets you add charts and graphs to your WordPress posts quickly and easily …

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

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

Visualizer Plugin Usage

After creating a new graph or chart and adding it to the Library, adding it to a page is really 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 graph or chart to be added to your content and click the “insert” icon …

This inserts a shortcode into your content …

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

After your post has been updated, click ‘View post’ to see the results …

Your post or page displays the chart or graph in where you placed the shortcode …

As mentioned previously, Visualizer also displays responsive graphs for mobile users …

As you can see, WordPress Visualizer allows you to add and customize dynamic charts and graphs in your content. You can update your data and the changes will automatically be reflected throughout your website. This is great if you’re adding dynamic graph data in WordPress.

The plugin developers have created a number 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, refer to the site below:

• WordPress Visualizer – Additional Tutorials

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

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