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 data.

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

You can present information with tables, but if you want your audience to try and interpret complex information with numbers, percentages and relationships easily, then charts and graphs let you present the information in an intelligent and meaningful way that can be quickly understood.

Graphs and charts help explain complex data so your audience can more easily interpret it!

If you need to learn how to present information visually and dynamically on your WordPress site using graphs and charts, this tutorial will show you how to create and add beautiful and updateable charts to your WordPress posts and pages that:

• Your site visitors can engage with
• Lets you upload data from your computer or a web-based source of data
• Will resize dynamically for mobile users

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

Use WordPress Chart & Graph Plugins

If you want to create dynamic 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 great free WordPress plugin that is simple to install, easy-to-use and allows you to not only create great-looking and interactive graphs and charts, it also lets you populate your charts and graphs with updateable data.

Visualizer

Visualizer Plugin URL

You can install the plugin inside your WP dashboard (explained further down the page), or access and download WordPress Visualizer from the link below:

http://wordpress.org/plugins/visualizer

Visualizer Plugin Description

The Visualizer plugin is a simple, easy to use and powerful tool that lets you create, manage and embed stunning 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 add-ons are needed.

WordPress 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

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. Various 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 devices without requiring the installation of additional plugins.

Plugin Installation

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

In the Add Plugins page type “visualizer” into the search field and click enter …

Locate the item in the search results area and click Install Now …

Click OK to go ahead …

Activate the plugin after successfully installing it …

You can also activate the plugin in the Plugins area …

Once your plugin has been activated, click on Library …

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

This brings up the plugin’s Visualizer Library settings …

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

Your next step is to add the charts and graphs to your library that you will want to display in your content.

Visualizer Plugin Configuration

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

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

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

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

The next step is to upload a CSV file that contains all the data you want to populate your chart or graph with …

When creating your CSV data file, ensure that:

• The first row includes your column headings.
• The second row contains the series type (e.g. boolean, datetime, 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 study the sample CSV file provided 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 hard drive select ‘From Computer‘ …

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

The plugin imports the data from the CSV file and displays it using the graph/chart type you have 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, 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 will display a range of customization settings and options …

The WordPress Visualizer plugin gives you full control of 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 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 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 happy with the look of your chart or graph, click on the ‘Create Chart’ button …

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

Note that new elements are given a unique ID displayed as a shortcode. As you will see very soon, this allows you to add graphs and charts to your WordPress posts and pages easily …

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

After adding a new item to the ‘Visualizer Library’, you can edit its details, duplicate it, or trash it …

Plugin Usage

After you’ve created a element and added it to Visualizer, adding it to pages or posts is really very 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 your content and click on the ‘Add Media‘ button …

Click on ‘Visualizations‘ …

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

This will add a shortcode into your content …

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

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

Your visual element will appear in the location where you have added the shortcode …

As mentioned earlier, the plugin also displays responsive graphs for mobile users …

As you can see, Visualizer lets you add 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 makes working with dynamic chart information in WordPress very efficient.

The plugin developers have created a series of step-by-step tutorials you can refer to to learn how to edit, customize and use the plugin.

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

• WordPress Visualizer – Additional Tutorials

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

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