How To Add Charts And Graphs To WordPress

You’ve heard the old adage “a picture is worth a thousand words.” This is certainly true when you’re trying to present or explain data.

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

You can use tables to present data, but if you want people to try and make sense of complex data with numbers, trends and comparisons more easily, then charts and graphs are perfect for helping them understand the information.

Charts and graphs help explain complex data so your audience can more easily understand it!

If you need to display information visually and dynamically on your WordPress site using graphs and charts, this tutorial will show you exactly how to create and add appealing and updatable charts and graphs to your WordPress pages that:

• Your site visitors can engage with
• Allows you to upload data from your computer or an online data source
• Will resize dynamically for mobile viewers

If you are displaying visual data like pie charts, comparison bars or trending graphs containing static information (e.g. historical data), an easier option is to create the charts or graphs using a desktop application, convert these into images and then simply insert the image into your posts.

Use WordPress Chart & Graph Plugins

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

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

Visualizer Plugin For WordPress

Visualizer Plugin URL

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

http://wordpress.org/plugins/visualizer

Visualizer Description

The Visualizer plugin is a simple, easy to use and powerful tool that allows you to create, manage and embed interactive 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 additional plugins or add-ons are required.

Visualizer also comes with a variety of built-in optimized for 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. A number of options are available for each chart that allow you to fully 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 any additional plugins.

How To Install WP Visualizer

From your WordPress dashboard, select Plugins > Add New from the navigation sidebar menu …

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

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

Click OK to proceed …

Activate the plugin after successfully installing it …

You can also activate the plugin in the Plugins page …

After the plugin has been activated, click on Library …

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

This brings up the plugin’s Visualizer Library settings page …

After installing the plugin, this section will be empty.

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

How To Configure The Visualizer Plugin

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

You will see all of the built-in types 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 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 your column headings.
• The second row contains the series type (e.g. number, timeofday, etc.)

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

If you are not sure how to format your data CSV, just use the sample spreadsheet provided with the plugin.

Next, select your data source (‘From Computer’ or ‘From Web’) in the ‘Upload CSV File’ section.

Upload CSV File From Computer

To upload your CSV file from your hard drive select ‘From Computer‘ …

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

The plugin will import your data and display it using the graph/chart type you have previously chosen …

Upload CSV File From The Web

For a 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 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 right data), and click ‘Next‘ …

Depending on the chart or graph type selected, the plugin will display various customization settings …

The plugin gives you complete control of your information, and updates your display in real time …

For example, the pie chart offers various configurable options, including:

• 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 are satisfied with how your graph or chart appears, click Create Chart …

Your new graph or chart 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 very soon, this lets you embed graphs and charts into your pages and posts easily …

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

After adding a new graph or chart to the ‘Visualizer Library’, you can edit its details, clone it, or delete it …

Plugin Usage

Once you have created a new element and added it to Visualizer, adding it to your content is really 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 the ‘Add Media‘ button …

Click on ‘Visualizations‘ …

Find the element to be added to your content and click on the “insert” icon …

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

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

After your post has been updated, click ‘View post’ to see it …

Your graph will display in where you’ve added the shortcode …

As mentioned previously, the plugin also displays responsive charts and graphs for mobile users …

As you can see, WordPress Visualizer lets you insert and customize dynamic charts and graphs in your content. You can edit your data and the changes will automatically be reflected wherever you have inserted your charts, graphs, comparison bars , etc. in your website. This makes working with dynamic chart data in WordPress really easy.

The plugin developers have created a series of tutorials you can refer to for ways to edit, customize and use WordPress Visualizer.

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

• WordPress Visualizer – Additional Tutorials

Congratulations! Now you know how to easily add eye-catching and dynamic charts and graphs to your WordPress pages and posts.

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