How To Add Charts And Graphs To WordPress

You’ve no doubt heard the old adage “a picture is worth a thousand words.” This is certainly true when you’re presenting or explaining complex information.

Using charts and graphs is great for 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 information with numbers, percentages and comparisons more easily, then graphs and charts are perfect for helping them interpret the data.

Charts and graphs help present complex information so your audience can more easily understand it!

Need to add charts or graphs to your WordPress content? This tutorial shows you how to use WP Visualizer – an easy-to-use and powerful plugin for WordPress that allows you to create, manage and insert colorful and interactive charts and graphs into your WordPress posts and pages with a few mouse clicks that:

• Your web visitors can interact with
• Lets you add data from your hard drive or a web-based data source
• Is dynamically responsive for mobile devices

If you plan to display visual data like bar charts, comparison charts or trending graphs which contain information that is not going to change (e.g. historical data), a simple method you can use to display your information is to create your charts or graphs using a desktop application, convert these into .jpg and .png images and then simply insert the images into your web content.

Use WordPress Chart & Graph Plugins

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

Fortunately, there is a plugin for WordPress users that is simple to install, easy-to-use and allows you to not only create beautiful and dynamic charts and graphs, it also lets you populate your charts and graphs with dynamic information.

Visualizer Plugin For WordPress

Plugin URL

You can install the plugin from your WP dashboard (explained a little further below), or access and download WP Visualizer here:

http://wordpress.org/plugins/visualizer

Plugin Description

Visualizer is an easy-to-use and powerful plugin that lets you create, manage and embed attractive and mobile-responsive graphs into your WordPress posts and pages with just a few mouse clicks.

WordPress 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 addons are needed.

Visualizer also provides 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

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 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 web browsers without having to install extra software.

Plugin Installation

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

In the Add Plugins page type search for “visualizer” 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 after successfully installing it …

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 in the dashboard menu …

This brings up 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 graph or chart to the library, click on the Add New button …

A page will load on your browser with all of the default kinds of charts available.

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

The graph/chart type will pop 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:

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

The screenshot below shows how to format your data as per the requirements above …

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

Once you have created your CSV file, 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 then click on ‘Open‘ …

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

Depending on the chart or graph type you’ve chosen, the plugin displays a range of customization settings …

Visualizer gives you full control over your information, 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 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 happy with the look of your graph or chart, click Create Chart …

Your chart or graph 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 a moment, this lets you insert charts and graphs into your WordPress posts and pages quickly and easily …

Charts and graphs 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

Once you have created a chart or graph and added it to the Visualizer Library, it’s very easy to insert it into a page or post.

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

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

After you have finished adding your visual element, click on Publish to publish (or update) your post or page …

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

Your post or page displays the visual element in the content …

As mentioned previously, Visualizer also displays responsive graphs and charts for viewing on mobile devices …

As you can see, Visualizer allows you to 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 website. This is very convenient if you’re adding dynamic graph information in WordPress.

The developers of this plugin 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 website below:

• WordPress Visualizer – Additional Tutorials

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

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