How To Add Charts And Graphs To WordPress

No doubt you’re familiar with the old adage “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 text passages, and making technical data more easily digestible.

You can present data with tables, but if you want your audience to try and make sense of complex data with numbers, trends and relationships quickly, then charts and graphs are perfect for helping them visualize your information.

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

Need to add charts or graphs to your WordPress posts? This tutorial shows you how to use WP Visualizer – an easy-to-use and powerful tool that allows you to create, manage and embed dynamic charts and graphs into your WordPress posts and pages that:

• Your visitors can interact with
• Lets you upload chart or graph data from your hard drive or a web-based source of data
• Is fully responsive for mobile users

If you are displaying visual data like bar charts, comparison charts or trending graphs containing static information (e.g. historical data), an easier way to present your information is to create your graphs or charts using a desktop application, convert these into jpg and png files and then simply add the images to your pages or posts.

Use WordPress Chart & Graph Plugins

If you want to add interactive bars and pie charts to 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 great-looking and interactive charts and graphs, it also lets you populate your charts and graphs with dynamic information.

Visualizer

Visualizer Plugin URL

You can install the plugin in your WP dashboard (explained further down the page), or download WP Visualizer the WordPress plugin directory using the link below:

http://wordpress.org/plugins/visualizer

Visualizer Plugin Description

The WP Visualizer plugin is a simple, easy to use and powerful tool that lets you create, manage and embed appealing and dynamic charts into your WordPress posts and pages with 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 additional plugins 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

WordPress Visualizer 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. A number of options are available for each chart that allow you to fully 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 site visitors can see your charts and graphs on their mobile browsers without requiring the installation of any extra plugins.

Plugin Installation

Inside your WordPress admin area, select Plugins > Add New from the main sidebar menu …

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

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

Click OK to go ahead …

Activate the plugin …

You can also activate the plugin in the Plugins page …

After your plugin has been activated, click on Library …

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

This brings up the plugin’s Visualizer Library options …

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

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

Visualizer Configuration

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

An image gallery displaying all of the default types of 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 …

The 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, ensure that:

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

The screenshot below shows how to format your data …

If you are unsure about how to format your CSV file, simply use 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 the CSV file from your computer select ‘From Computer‘ …

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

The plugin imports the data from the CSV file and displays it using the graph/chart type you have previously 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, make sure that all of the information is correct (if not, click on the ‘Back’ button and reupload a data file containing the right data), and click ‘Next‘ …

Depending on the chart or graph type selected, the plugin displays various customization options …

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

For example, the pie chart offers various configurable options, such as:

• 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 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 way your chart or graph looks, click Create Chart …

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

Note that each visual element is given a unique ID displayed as a shortcode. As you will see shortly, this allows you to easily embed charts and graphs into your content …

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

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

Plugin Usage

Once you have created a new chart or graph and added it to Visualizer, it’s very easy to insert it into your pages and posts.

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‘ …

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

This will add a shortcode into your content …

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

After the page/post has been updated, click ‘View post’ to see it …

Your page or post should display your item in the location you specified …

As mentioned earlier, Visualizer also displays responsive graphs and charts for mobile users …

As you can see, WordPress Visualizer lets you add and customize dynamic charts and graphs in your content. You can update your data and the changes will automatically be reflected wherever you have inserted your charts, graphs, comparison bars , etc. in your site. This makes working with interactive chart data in WordPress very easy.

The developers of this plugin have created a number of tutorials you can use to learn how to edit, customize and use the Visualizer plugin.

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

• WordPress Visualizer – Additional Tutorials

Congratulations! Now you know how to easily create stunning and mobile-responsive charts and graphs in WordPress.

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