How To Add Charts And Graphs To WordPress

You’ve no doubt heard the saying “a picture is worth a thousand words.” This is certainly true when you are trying to present or explain complex information.

Using graphs and charts is useful for breaking up long passage of technical information, and making technical data more easily digestible.

You can present information using tables, but if you want people to try and make sense of complex data with numbers, percentages or comparisons more easily, then graphs and charts are perfect for helping them interpret your data.

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

Need to add charts and graphs to your WordPress content? This tutorial shows you how to use the WordPress Visualizer plugin – a simple, easy to use and powerful tool that allows you to create, manage and insert colorful and mobile-responsive charts and graphs into your WordPress posts and pages that:

• Your site visitors can interact with
• Lets you upload graph or chart data from your hard drive or an online source of data
• Is dynamically responsive for mobile browsing

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

Use WordPress Chart & Graph Plugins

If you want to easily create interactive bars and pie graphs in WordPress pages and posts 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 appealing and interactive graphs and charts, it also lets you populate your charts and graphs with updatable content.

Visualizer – WordPress Plugin

Visualizer URL

You can install the plugin inside your WP dashboard (see further below), or access and download WordPress Visualizer from the link below:

http://wordpress.org/plugins/visualizer

Visualizer Description

WP Visualizer is an easy-to-use and powerful tool that allows you to create, manage and embed beautiful and interactive charts into your WordPress posts and pages with just a few mouse clicks.

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 additional addons are required.

The plugin also provides 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

The plugin is also 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 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 visitors can see your charts and graphs on their mobile device browsers without having to install any extra plugins.

How To Install Visualizer

From your WordPress dashboard, select Plugins > Add New from the navigation sidebar menu …

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

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

Click OK to continue …

Activate the plugin after installation is successful …

You can also activate the plugin in the Plugins page …

Once the plugin has been activated, click on Library …

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

This brings up the plugin’s Visualizer Library page …

When you first install the plugin, the library contains no charts.

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

How To Configure The Plugin

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

A visual gallery displaying all of the kinds of graphs available will load on your screen.

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

The selected graph/chart type will pop up in a lightbox.

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

When creating your CSV data file, make sure that:

• The first row contains the column headings.
• Your second row contains the series type (e.g. boolean, datetime, etc.)

The screenshot below shows how to format your data correctly …

If you are unsure about how to format your data CSV, just study the sample CSV file supplied 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 the CSV file and data from your computer select ‘From Computer‘ …

Use the browser to locate and select your file and then click on ‘Open‘ …

The plugin will now import the data and display it using the graph/chart type you have previously selected …

Upload CSV File From The Web

For a step-by-step 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 the data, make sure that all of your information is correct (if not, click on the ‘Back’ button and reupload a data file with the correct data), and then click ‘Next‘ …

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

The WordPress Visualizer plugin gives you full control over your chart or graph, and updates your display in real time …

For example, the pie chart offers various 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’re satisfied with the way your chart or graph looks, click Create Chart …

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

Note that new visual elements are given a unique ID displayed as a shortcode. As you will see in just a moment, this allows you to easily insert charts and graphs into your content …

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

After an item has been added to the ‘Visualizer Library’, you can edit its details, clone it, or trash it …

Visualizer Plugin Usage

After creating a graph or chart and adding it to Visualizer, it’s very easy to add it to posts and pages.

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 the content and click on the ‘Add Media‘ button …

Click on ‘Visualizations‘ …

Select the element to be inserted into your content and click the “insert” icon …

This will place a shortcode for the element into your content …

After you have added the element, click on Publish to publish (or update) your content …

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

Your post or page displays your graph in where you have inserted the shortcode …

As mentioned earlier, Visualizer also displays responsive charts for mobile screens …

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

The plugin developers have created a number of step-by-step tutorials you can refer to to learn how to edit, customize and use Visualizer.

For tutorials on editing, copying, 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 dynamic charts and graphs in WordPress with WordPress Visualizer plugin.

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