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’re trying to present or explain complex information.

Using charts and graphs is a great way to break up long text passages, and make statistical data and information more easily digestible.

You can present information with tables, but if you want your audience to try and make sense of complex information with figures, percentages or comparisons more easily, then graphs and charts allow you to present data in a meaningful and intelligent manner that can be quickly understood.

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

Need to add charts or graphs to WordPress? This tutorial shows you how to use WP Visualizer – a simple, easy to use and powerful tool that lets you create, manage and insert beautiful and mobile-responsive graphs into your WordPress posts and pages in just a few simple steps that:

• Your web visitors can engage with
• Lets you add data from your computer or a web-based data source
• Resizes dynamically for mobile browsing

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 display this data is to create your graphs or charts using an image editing application, convert these into .jpg or .png images and then simply add your image files to your posts.

Use WordPress Chart & Graph Plugins

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

Fortunately, there is a WordPress plugin 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 updateable data.

WP Plugin: Visualizer

Visualizer URL

You can install the plugin in your WordPress dashboard (we will explain how to do this further below), or download WP Visualizer from the link below:

http://wordpress.org/plugins/visualizer

Plugin Description

WordPress Visualizer is a simple, easy to use and powerful tool that allows you to create, manage and embed colorful and interactive graphs and charts into your WordPress posts and pages in a few simple steps.

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 extra addons are required.

The plugin also comes with a variety of charts that are optimized to address all 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. A number of options are available for each chart that allow you to customize their settings.

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 devices without requiring the installation of any extra plugins.

How To Install The Visualizer Plugin

From your WP dashboard, select Plugins > Add New from the main admin menu …

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

Locate Visualizer in the search results area and click the “Install Now” button …

Click OK to go ahead …

Activate the plugin after installation is successful …

You can also activate the plugin in the Plugins section …

After your plugin has been activated, click on Library …

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

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

When you first install the plugin, this section will be empty.

Your next step is to add add charts and graphs to your library.

How To Configure The Visualizer Plugin

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

An image gallery displaying all of the different types of charts and graphs 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 pop up in a new window.

The next step is to upload a CSV file with your data …

When creating your CSV data file, make sure that:

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

The screenshot below shows how to format your data as required …

If you are unsure about how to format your data CSV, simply refer to the sample supplied 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 hard drive select ‘From Computer‘ …

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

The plugin will import your data from the CSV file and display 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 the data, check 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 click ‘Next‘ …

Depending on the chart or graph type you have selected, the plugin will display a number of customization settings and options …

Visualizer gives you full control of your information, and updates your display in real time …

For example, the pie chart offers many configurable options, including:

• 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 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’re satisfied with how your chart or graph appears, click Create Chart …

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

Note that every new element is given a unique ID displayed as a shortcode. As you will see shortly, this lets you easily insert charts and graphs into your content …

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

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

Visualizer Plugin Usage

After creating a new chart or graph and adding it to the Library, adding it to a page is very 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 the ‘Add Media‘ button …

Click on ‘Visualizations‘ …

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

This adds a shortcode for the element into your content …

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

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

Your post or page will display the chart or graph in the content …

As mentioned earlier, Visualizer also displays responsive graphs for mobile browsing …

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

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

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 easily insert great-looking charts and graphs into WordPress.

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