How To Add Charts And Graphs To WordPress

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

Charts and graphs are a great way to break up long passage of text, and make technical data more easily digestible.

You can present data with tables, but if you want your audience to try and make sense of complex information with figures, percentages or comparisons easily, then charts and graphs let you present data in an intelligent and meaningful manner that can be easily processed.

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

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

• Your site visitors can interact with
• Lets you add graph or chart data from your hard drive or a web-based source of data
• Is fully responsive for mobile browsers

If you plan to display visual data like pie charts, comparison charts or trending graphs that contain static information (e.g. historical data), a simple method you can use is to create the graphs or charts using a desktop application, convert these into images and then simply insert your image files into your content.

Use WordPress Chart & Graph Plugins

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

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

Visualizer

Plugin URL

You can install the plugin in your WordPress dashboard (we explain how to do this further below), or access and download Visualizer from the link below:

http://wordpress.org/plugins/visualizer

Plugin Description

The WP Visualizer plugin is a simple, easy to use and powerful tool that lets you create, manage and embed colorful graphs and charts into your WordPress posts and pages with a few simple steps.

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 additional plugins or add-ons are needed.

The plugin 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 flexible and customizable, 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 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 blog or site visitors can see your charts and graphs on their mobile browsers without requiring the installation of any additional software.

How To Install Visualizer

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

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

Locate the plugin in the search results screen and click Install Now …

Click OK to continue …

Activate the plugin …

You can also activate the plugin in the Plugins area …

Once your 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 brings up the plugin’s Visualizer Library options screen …

After installing the plugin, the library section will be empty.

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

Visualizer Plugin Configuration

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

A visual gallery displaying all the different types of graphs available will come up on your screen.

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

The selected graph/chart type will pop up in a lightbox.

The next step is to upload a CSV file containing the data you would like to populate your chart or graph with …

When creating your CSV data file, make sure that:

• The first row includes 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 unsure about how to format your data CSV, simply use the sample file supplied with the plugin.

Once you have completed this step, select the data source (‘From Computer’ or ‘From Web’) in the ‘Upload CSV File’ section.

Upload CSV File From Computer

To upload your CSV file and data from your computer select ‘From Computer‘ …

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

The plugin imports the data from the CSV file and displays 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, see the article below:

• 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 containing the right data), and then click ‘Next‘ …

Depending on the chart or graph type you have chosen, the plugin will display a range of customization options and settings …

The WordPress Visualizer plugin 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 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’re happy with the way your graph or chart appears, click Create Chart …

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

Note that each visual element is given a unique ID displayed as a shortcode. As you will see shortly, this allows you to add charts and graphs to your pages easily …

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

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

Visualizer Usage

After creating a graph or chart and adding it to the Visualizer Library, it’s simple to insert it into your content.

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 your content and click on Add Media …

Click on ‘Visualizations‘ …

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

This adds a shortcode into your content …

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

After the page/post has been updated, click ‘View post’ to see the end result …

The item will show up in the content …

As mentioned earlier, the plugin also displays responsive charts for mobile viewing …

As you can see, Visualizer allows you to insert and customize dynamic charts and graphs in your content. You can update your data and the changes will automatically be reflected throughout your site. This makes adding dynamic chart information in WordPress very efficient.

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

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

• WordPress Visualizer – Additional Tutorials

Congratulations! Now you know how to create stunning and dynamic pie charts and graphs in WordPress with WP Visualizer plugin.

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