How To Add Charts And Graphs To WordPress

You’ve no doubt heard the old saying “a picture is worth a thousand words.” This certainly applies when you’re presenting and explaining complex data.

Using graphs and charts is useful for breaking up long and boring text, and making statistical data and information a whole lot simpler to understand.

You can use tables to present information, but if you want your audience to try and interpret complex information with figures, percentages or relationships more easily, then graphs and charts are perfect for helping them understand the data.

Graphs and charts help present complex information so your audience can more easily interpret it!

If you need to display information visually and dynamically on your WordPress site like graphs and charts, this step-by-step tutorial will show you how to create colourful and interactive graphs and charts to your pages and posts that:

• Your web visitors can engage with
• Allows you to add graph or chart data from your computer or an online data source
• Is responsive for mobile devices

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 to display the information is to create the charts or graphs using an image editing application, convert these into .jpg and .png files and then simply insert the image files into your web content.

Use WordPress Chart & Graph Plugins

If you want to easily add dynamic bars and graphs to WordPress 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 beautiful and dynamic charts and graphs, it also lets you populate your charts and graphs with updateable data.

Visualizer Plugin For WordPress

Visualizer Plugin URL

You can install the plugin in your WP dashboard (see further below), or download WordPress Visualizer the WordPress plugin repository using the link below:

http://wordpress.org/plugins/visualizer

Plugin Description

Visualizer is an easy-to-use and powerful WordPress plugin that lets you create, manage and insert great-looking and interactive graphs into your WordPress posts and pages with a few simple steps.

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 add-ons are needed.

Visualizer also comes with 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. A number of options are available for each chart that allow you to 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 site visitors can see your charts and graphs on their mobile web browsers without requiring the installation of additional plugins.

Plugin Installation

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

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

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

Click OK to proceed …

Activate the plugin after installing it …

You can also activate the plugin in the Plugins area …

After the plugin has been activated, click on Library …

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

This takes you to the plugin’s Visualizer Library screen …

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

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

How To Configure The Visualizer Plugin

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

A page will load on your screen displaying all the kinds of charts available.

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

Your graph/chart type will open up in a lightbox.

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

When creating your CSV data file, ensure that:

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

The screenshot below shows how to format your data as required …

If you are not sure how to format your data CSV, simply refer to the sample file 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 a CSV file and data from your hard drive select ‘From Computer‘ …

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

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

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 the data, check that all of your information is correct (if not, click on the ‘Back’ button and reupload a data file with the right data), and then click ‘Next‘ …

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

Visualizer gives you full control of your information, 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 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 how your chart or graph looks, click on the ‘Create Chart’ button …

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

Note that every element is given a unique ID displayed in a shortcode. As you will see in a moment, this allows you to embed charts and graphs into your pages easily and quickly …

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 its details, clone it, or delete it …

Plugin Usage

After creating a graph or chart and adding it to the Library, it’s quite 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 want to insert your visual element into the content and click on the ‘Add Media‘ button …

Click on ‘Visualizations‘ …

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

This inserts a shortcode for the element into your content …

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

After publishing the page, click ‘View post’ to see it …

Your page or post displays the chart in the location you specified …

As mentioned earlier, Visualizer also displays responsive graphs for mobile viewers …

As you can see, the Visualizer plugin lets you insert and customize dynamic charts and graphs in your content. You can change your data and the changes will automatically be reflected throughout your site. This is one of the great benefits of using the Visualizer plugin if you’re working with dynamic chart data 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 WordPress Visualizer.

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

• WordPress Visualizer – Additional Tutorials

Congratulations! Now you know how to easily create colorful and interactive charts and graphs in WordPress.

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