How To Add Charts And Graphs To WordPress

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

Using charts and graphs is great for breaking up long passage of text, and making data more easily digestible.

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

Charts and graphs help you explain complex information so people can more easily interpret it!

Need to add charts or graphs to WordPress? This step-by-step tutorial shows you how to use WP Visualizer – a simple, easy to use and powerful tool that allows you to create, manage and insert eye-catching and interactive graphs into your WordPress posts and pages with just a few simple steps that:

• Your web visitors can engage with
• Allows you to add data from your hard drive or a web-based source of data
• Resizes dynamically for mobile browsing

If you are displaying visual data like pie charts, comparison data or trending graphs which contain information that is not going to change (e.g. historical data), an easier way to add your data is to create the graphs or charts using a desktop application, convert these into images and then simply insert your images into your page or post.

Use WordPress Chart & Graph Plugins

If you want to embed interactive bar charts and pie charts into WordPress with no coding skills required, the easiest way to do this is to use a plugin.

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

WordPress Plugin: Visualizer

Visualizer URL

You can install the plugin from your WP dashboard (we show you how to do this a little further down the page), or access and download WP Visualizer from the link below:

http://wordpress.org/plugins/visualizer

Visualizer Plugin Description

The Visualizer plugin is a simple, easy to use and powerful tool that lets you create, manage and embed mobile-responsive 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 extra plugins or add-ons are needed.

Visualizer also contains a variety of built-in optimized for all 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 the look and feel of your website. Various options are available for each chart that allow you to 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 having to install any extra software.

How To Install Visualizer

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

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

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

Click OK to continue …

Activate the plugin …

You can also activate the plugin in the Plugins area …

After the plugin has been activated, click on Library …

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

This brings up the plugin’s Visualizer Library options screen …

After installing the plugin, the library contains no charts.

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

Plugin Configuration

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

An image gallery displaying all the different kinds of graphs available will load 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 lightbox.

The next step is to upload a CSV file containing all the data you want to populate your chart or graph with …

When creating your CSV data file, make sure that:

• Your first row includes your column headings.
• The 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 not sure how to format your CSV file, simply download the sample that comes with the plugin.

Next, 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 data file and click on ‘Open‘ …

The plugin will import the data from the CSV file and display it using the graph/chart type you have previously 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 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 correct data), and then click ‘Next‘ …

Depending on the chart or graph type you’ve picked, the plugin displays various customization options and settings …

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

For example, the pie chart offers many 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’re satisfied with the look of your graph or chart, click Create Chart …

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

Note that new elements are given a unique ID displayed in a shortcode. As you will see shortly, this allows you to add charts and graphs to your pages and posts quickly and easily …

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

After adding an item to the ‘Visualizer Library’, you can edit it, duplicate it, or trash it …

Visualizer Usage

After creating a graph or chart and adding it to the Library, adding it to a post or page is quite 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 Add Media …

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 …

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

Your page or post displays the graph or chart in your content …

As mentioned previously, the plugin also displays responsive charts for mobile device browsing …

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

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

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

• WordPress Visualizer – Additional Tutorials

Congratulations! Now you know how to easily insert mobile-responsive charts and graphs into your WordPress pages and posts.

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