How To Add Charts And Graphs To WordPress

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

Using graphs and charts is useful for breaking up long passage of technical information, and making data more easily digestible.

You can present information with tables, but if you want people to try and interpret complex data with figures, trends and comparisons easily, then charts and graphs are perfect for helping them interpret the data.

Charts and graphs help present complex data so people can more easily understand it!

Need to add charts or graphs to your WordPress posts? This tutorial shows you how to use WordPress Visualizer – a simple, easy to use and powerful tool that lets you create, manage and embed stunning and mobile-responsive charts into your WordPress posts and pages that:

• Your visitors can engage with
• Allows you to add data from your hard drive or a web-based data source
• Will dynamically resize for mobile device users

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 is to create your charts or graphs using a desktop application, convert these into images and then simply insert the image into your page or post.

Use WordPress Chart & Graph Plugins

If you want to create dynamic bars and pie charts in WordPress 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 appealing and dynamic charts and graphs, it also lets you populate your charts and graphs with dynamic data.

Visualizer

Visualizer Plugin URL

You can install the plugin in your WP dashboard (explained a little further down the page), or access and download the Visualizer plugin the WordPress free plugin directory using the link below:

http://wordpress.org/plugins/visualizer

Visualizer Plugin Description

WP Visualizer is a simple, easy to use and powerful tool that lets you create, manage and insert great-looking and dynamic charts and graphs into your WordPress posts and pages in 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 extra add-ons are required.

Visualizer also contains a variety of built-in 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 your web design. A number of options are available for each chart that let you further 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 visitors can see your charts and graphs on their mobile browsers without having to install any extra plugins.

Plugin Installation

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

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

After the plugin has been activated, click on Library …

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

This brings up the plugin’s Visualizer Library page …

When you first install the plugin, this section will be empty.

Your next step is to add the charts and graphs to your library that you will want to insert into your pages and posts.

How To Configure The Visualizer Plugin

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

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

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

Your graph/chart type will pop up in a new window.

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

When creating your CSV data file, ensure that:

• The first row includes your column headings.
• Your second row contains the series type (e.g. number, date, 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 supplied with the plugin.

Once you have completed this step, 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‘ …

Use the browser to locate and select your file and then click on ‘Open‘ …

The plugin imports your data from the CSV file and displays it using the graph/chart type selected …

Upload CSV File From The Web

For a step-by-step tutorial that explains 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 the information is correct (if not, click on the ‘Back’ button and reupload a new data file with the correct data), and click ‘Next‘ …

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

Visualizer gives you complete control over 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 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 the look of your graph or chart, click Create Chart …

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

Note that new visual elements are given a unique ID displayed in a shortcode. As you will see shortly, this lets you insert graphs and charts into your pages and posts quickly and easily …

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

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

Visualizer Plugin Usage

Once you have created a chart or graph and added it to the Library, it’s very easy to add it to your pages or 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 the content and click on the ‘Add Media‘ button …

Click on ‘Visualizations‘ …

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

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

Once you have finished adding your item, click on Publish to publish (or update) your content …

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

Your post or page should display your chart or graph in your content …

As mentioned previously, the plugin also displays responsive charts for mobile browsers …

As you can see, WordPress Visualizer lets you add and customize dynamic charts and graphs in your content. You can change your data and your changes will automatically be reflected wherever you have inserted your charts, graphs, comparison bars , etc. in your website. This is a real time-saver if you’re working with dynamic graph information in WordPress.

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

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

• WordPress Visualizer – Additional Tutorials

Congratulations! Now you know how to create stunning and dynamic charts and graphs in WordPress.

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