How To Add Charts And Graphs To WordPress

You’re probably familiar with the adage “a picture is worth a thousand words.” This is certainly true when you are presenting and explaining data.

Using charts and graphs is a great way to break up long chunks of technical information, and make statistical data and information 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 numbers, trends and comparisons easily, then graphs and charts let you present your information in an intelligent and meaningful way that can be easily understood.

Graphs and charts help present complex information so your audience can more easily interpret it!

Need to add charts and graphs to your WordPress posts and pages? This tutorial shows you how to use WP Visualizer – a simple, easy to use and powerful plugin that allows you to create, manage and insert great-looking and dynamic charts into your WordPress posts and pages in just a few simple steps that:

• Your web visitors can engage with
• Lets you add data from your computer or a web-based data source
• Dynamically resizes for mobile device screens

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 the charts or graphs using a desktop application, convert these into images and then simply add the images to your posts or pages.

Use WordPress Chart & Graph Plugins

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

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

Visualizer

Plugin URL

You can install the plugin inside your WP dashboard (explained a little further below), or access and download WP 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 dynamic graphs into your WordPress posts and pages with just a few mouse clicks.

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.

The plugin also provides 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

WordPress Visualizer 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 your site’s design. A number of options are available for each chart that allow you to fully 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 blog or site visitors can see your charts and graphs on their mobile device browsers without requiring the installation of any additional software.

How To Install The Plugin

Inside your WordPress admin area, select Plugins > Add New from the main admin menu …

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

Locate the item in the search results screen 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 section …

After your plugin has been activated, click on Library …

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

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

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

The next step is to add the charts and graphs to your library that you will want to display in your pages and posts.

Visualizer Configuration

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

You will see all of the default kinds of graphs available.

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

The selected graph/chart type will open up in a new window.

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

When creating your CSV data file, ensure that:

• Your first row includes your column headings.
• The second row includes the series type (e.g. string, 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 study 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 a CSV file from your hard drive select ‘From Computer‘ …

Locate and select your data file and 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 with the right data), and click ‘Next‘ …

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

Visualizer 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 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 how your graph or chart is looking, click Create Chart …

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 in just a moment, this allows you to insert graphs and charts into your posts and pages easily …

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

After adding an element to the ‘Visualizer Library’, you can edit it, duplicate it, or trash it …

Visualizer Usage

After you’ve created a element and added it to the Visualizer Library, it’s very easy to add it to your content.

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

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

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

Once the page has been updated, click ‘View post’ to see the results …

Your post or page displays the graph or chart in your content …

As mentioned earlier, Visualizer also displays responsive visual elements for mobile screens …

As you can see, the Visualizer plugin allows you to add and customize dynamic charts and graphs in your content. You can change your data and your changes will automatically be reflected throughout your site. This is a real time-saver if you’re managing dynamic chart information in WordPress.

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

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

• WordPress Visualizer – Additional Tutorials

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

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