How To Add Charts And Graphs To WordPress

You’ve heard the old adage “a picture is worth a thousand words.” This certainly applies when you’re presenting or explaining complex information.

Using charts and graphs is useful for making technical or statistical data much easier to understand.

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

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

Need to add charts and graphs to WordPress? This tutorial shows you how to use the WP Visualizer plugin – a simple, easy to use and powerful tool that lets you create, manage and embed great-looking and interactive graphs into your WordPress posts and pages that:

• Your site visitors can engage with
• Allows you to upload chart or graph data from your computer or a web-based data source
• Resizes dynamically for mobile device users

If you plan to display visual data like bar charts, comparison graphs or trending graphs containing static information (e.g. historical data), an easier option is to create the graphs or charts using a desktop application, convert these into .jpg and .png files and then simply insert the files and an image into your site content.

Use WordPress Chart & Graph Plugins

If you want to easily insert interactive bars and graphs into WordPress with no coding skills required, the easiest way to do this is to use a plugin.

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

WP Plugin: Visualizer

Visualizer URL

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

http://wordpress.org/plugins/visualizer

Visualizer Description

WordPress Visualizer is a simple, easy to use and powerful tool that allows you to create, manage and embed attractive and dynamic charts and graphs into your WordPress posts and pages in a few mouse clicks.

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 components are required.

Visualizer also provides a variety of charts 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 a flexible and customizable plugin, allowing you to use Google Chart Tools with their default setting, or configure an extensive set of options to match your web design. Several options are available for each chart that allow you to 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 visitors can see your charts and graphs on their mobile device browsers without having to install any extra plugins.

Plugin Installation

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

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

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

Click OK to continue …

Activate the plugin …

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 your admin menu …

This brings up the plugin’s Visualizer Library page …

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

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

How To Configure Visualizer

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

You will be presented with all the kinds of charts and graphs available.

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

Your selected graph/chart type will open up in a new window.

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

When creating your CSV data file, make sure that:

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

The screenshot below shows how to format your data as explained above …

If you are unsure about how to format your CSV file, simply use the sample supplied with the plugin.

Once you have done this, 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 click on ‘Open‘ …

The plugin will now import the data 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 your data, check that all of your information is correct (if not, click on the ‘Back’ button and reupload a new data file containing the correct data), and click ‘Next‘ …

Depending on the chart or graph type you’ve selected, the plugin displays a number of customization options …

Visualizer gives you total control over 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 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’re satisfied with the look of your graph or chart, click on the ‘Create Chart’ button …

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

Note that each visual element is given a unique ID displayed in a shortcode. As you will see very soon, this lets you add charts and graphs to your WordPress posts quickly and easily …

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

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

Plugin Usage

After creating a graph or chart and adding it to the Visualizer Library, it’s simple to insert it into a page.

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‘ …

Select the graph or chart you want to insert into your content and click on the “insert” icon …

This inserts a shortcode into your content …

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

After your page/post has been published, click ‘View post’ to see the end result …

Your chart will show in the location where you placed the shortcode …

As mentioned previously, the plugin also displays responsive elements for mobile device users …

As you can see, Visualizer lets you add and customize dynamic charts and graphs in your content. You can edit your data and your changes will automatically be reflected wherever you have inserted your charts, graphs, comparison bars , etc. in your site. This is a real time-saver if you’re managing interactive chart information in WordPress.

The plugin developers have created a series of step-by-step tutorials you can use to learn how 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 site below:

• WordPress Visualizer – Additional Tutorials

Congratulations! Now you know how to create attractive and interactive pie charts and graphs in WordPress with WordPress Visualizer.

***

***