How To Add Charts And Graphs To WordPress

You’re probably familiar with the adage “a picture is worth a thousand words.” This is certainly true when you’re presenting or explaining complex information.

Charts and graphs help to make technical or statistical data more easily digestible.

You can use tables to present information, but if you want your audience to try and interpret complex information with figures, trends or comparisons more easily, then graphs and charts are perfect for helping them understand the information.

Charts and graphs help explain complex data so people can more easily understand it!

Need to add charts and graphs to WordPress? This step-by-step tutorial shows you how to use the WordPress Visualizer plugin – a simple, easy to use and powerful tool that lets you create, manage and insert stunning and dynamic graphs into your WordPress posts and pages that:

• Your site visitors can engage with
• Lets you add data from your computer or a web-based data source
• Is fully responsive for viewing on mobile devices

If you plan to display visual data like pie 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 the information is to create the charts or graphs using an image editing application, convert these into images and then simply add the files and an image to your page or post.

Use WordPress Chart & Graph Plugins

If you want to easily create interactive bars and pie charts in WordPress with no coding skills required, the easiest way to do this is to use a plugin.

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

Visualizer – WP Plugin

Visualizer Plugin URL

You can install the plugin from your WordPress dashboard (we will explain how to do this a little further below), or access and download the Visualizer plugin here:

http://wordpress.org/plugins/visualizer

Plugin Description

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

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 plugins or 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 flexible and customizable, 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 let you fully 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 web visitors can see your charts and graphs on their mobile web browsers without requiring the installation of any additional software.

Plugin Installation

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

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

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

Click OK to proceed …

Activate the plugin after installation is successful …

You can also activate the plugin in the Plugins page …

After your plugin has been activated, click on Library …

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

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

After installing the plugin, the library will contain no charts.

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

Visualizer Configuration

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

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

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 with the data you would like your chart or graph to be populated with …

When creating your CSV data file, ensure 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 as required …

If you are unsure about how to format your data CSV, simply download the sample spreadsheet 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 the 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 the data and display 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, see the article below:

• How To Populate Data Using Google Spreadsheet

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

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

The 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 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 how your graph or chart looks, click Create Chart …

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

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

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

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

Visualizer Usage

Once you have created a graph or chart and added it to Visualizer, it’s easy to add it to your content.

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 the ‘Add Media‘ button …

Click on ‘Visualizations‘ …

Find the chart or graph to be added to your content and click the “insert” icon …

This inserts a shortcode for the element into your content …

Once you have added the shortcode, click on Publish to publish (or update) your page or post …

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

You will see your graph in the location you specified …

As mentioned earlier, Visualizer also displays responsive visual elements 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 your changes will automatically be reflected throughout your website. This makes adding dynamic graph data in WordPress really easy.

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

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

• WordPress Visualizer – Additional Tutorials

Congratulations! Now you know how to easily create stunning and interactive pie charts and graphs in WordPress.

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