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’re presenting and explaining complex data.

Charts and graphs can help to break up long text passages, and make statistical 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 quickly, then graphs and charts are perfect for helping them understand the information.

Graphs and charts help you explain complex data so people can more easily understand it!

If you want to present information visually and dynamically on your WordPress site like charts and graphs, this step-by-step tutorial will show you exactly how to create and add colourful and updateable charts to WordPress that:

• Your site visitors can engage with
• Lets you upload data from your computer or a web-based data source
• Resizes dynamically for mobile browsers

If you plan to display visual data like pie charts, comparison graphs or trending graphs containing information that is not going to change (e.g. historical data), a simple method you can use is to create the graphs or charts using an image editing application, convert these into images and then simply insert the image files into your pages or posts.

Use WordPress Chart & Graph Plugins

If you want to easily add dynamic bar charts and pie graphs to WordPress pages with no coding skills required, the easiest way to do this is to use a plugin.

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

Visualizer

Visualizer Plugin URL

You can install the plugin from your WP dashboard (we explain how to do this further below), or download WP Visualizer here:

http://wordpress.org/plugins/visualizer

Plugin Description

WordPress Visualizer is a simple, easy to use and powerful plugin that lets you create, manage and embed attractive and dynamic graphs into your WordPress posts and pages in 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 extra plugins are needed.

WordPress 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 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. A number of options are available for each chart that let you 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 web visitors can see your charts and graphs on their mobile devices without having to install any extra plugins.

Plugin Installation

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

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

Locate the entry in the search results section 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 area …

After your plugin has been activated, click on Library …

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

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

After installing the plugin, the library contains no charts.

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

Visualizer Configuration

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

An image gallery displaying all of the different types of charts and graphs available will load on your screen.

Select the chart or graph type 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 that contains your data …

When creating your CSV data file, ensure that:

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

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

If you are not sure how to format your data CSV, simply download the sample file that comes 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‘ …

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

The plugin imports the data and displays it using the graph/chart type selected …

Upload CSV File From The Web

For a step-by-step tutorial that shows you 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, make sure that all of your information is correct (if not, click on the ‘Back’ button and reupload a new data file containing the right data), and then click ‘Next‘ …

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

The plugin gives you full control over your information, and updates your display in real time …

For example, the pie chart offers many 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 are happy with the look of your graph or chart, click on the ‘Create Chart’ button …

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

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

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

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

Plugin Usage

Once you have created a element 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 would like to insert your visual element into your content and click on Add Media …

Click on ‘Visualizations‘ …

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

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

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

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

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

As mentioned previously, the plugin also displays responsive visual elements for mobile screens …

As you can see, Visualizer lets you insert 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 website. This is great if you’re managing dynamic graph information in WordPress.

The developers of this plugin have created a number of step-by-step tutorials you can refer to to learn how to edit, customize and use WordPress Visualizer.

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

• WordPress Visualizer – Additional Tutorials

Congratulations! Now you know how to easily insert colorful and dynamic charts and graphs into WordPress.

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