How To Add Charts And Graphs To WordPress
You’ve heard the adage “a picture is worth a thousand words.” This certainly applies when you are presenting and explaining complex information.
Using graphs and charts is useful for breaking up content with a disproportionate amount of text, and making statistical data simpler and easier to understand.
You can present information with tables, but if you want people to try and interpret complex data with figures, percentages or comparisons quickly, then graphs and charts let you present your data in an intelligent and meaningful way that can be quickly and easily processed.
Charts and graphs help you explain complex data so people can more easily understand it!
If you want to learn how to present information visually and dynamically on your WordPress site using charts and graphs, this tutorial will show you exactly how to create and add great-looking and updateable charts and graphs to your WordPress posts and pages that:
- Your visitors can interact with
- Lets you add data from your hard drive or an online source of data
- Dynamically resizes for viewing on mobile devices
If you are displaying visual data like pie charts, comparison charts or trending graphs that contain static information (e.g. historical data), an easier way to display your information is to create your charts or graphs using a desktop application, convert these into jpg or png files and then simply insert the image files into your post or page.
Use WordPress Chart & Graph Plugins
If you want to insert dynamic bars and pie graphs into WordPress posts with no coding skills required, the easiest way to do this is to use a plugin.
Fortunately, there is a great WordPress plugin that is simple to install, easy-to-use and allows you to not only create eye-catching and mobile-responsive charts and graphs, it also lets you populate your charts and graphs with updatable content.
WP Plugin: Visualizer
Visualizer URL
You can install the plugin inside your WP dashboard (we will explain how to do this further down the page), or access and download WP Visualizer here:
http://wordpress.org/plugins/visualizer
Plugin Description
The WP Visualizer plugin is a simple, easy to use and powerful tool that allows you to create, manage and embed stunning and mobile-responsive graphs and charts into your WordPress posts and pages in just a few simple steps.
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.
WordPress Visualizer also contains a variety of built-in 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. Several 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 blog or site visitors can see your charts and graphs on their mobile devices without requiring the installation of extra software.
Plugin Installation
From your WordPress admin area, select Plugins > Add New from the navigation sidebar menu …
In the Add Plugins page type in search for “visualizer” and hit enter …
Locate the entry 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 …
After your plugin has been activated, click on Library …
You can get to the plugin’s ‘library’ screen by selecting Media > Visualizer Library in your dashboard menu …
This brings up the plugin’s Visualizer Library settings page …
When you first install the plugin, this section will be empty.
The next step is to add add charts and graphs to your library.
How To Configure The Plugin
To add a new chart or graph to the plugin’s library, click on the Add New button …
You will be presented with all the kinds of graphs available.
Select the type of graph or chart 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 containing the data you want your chart or graph to be populated with …
When creating your CSV data file, ensure that:
- The first row contains your column headings.
- Your second row contains the series type (e.g. boolean, date, etc.)
The screenshot below shows how to format your data …
If you are unsure about how to format your CSV file, just use the sample file supplied with the plugin.
Once you have created your CSV file, select the 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‘ …
Use the browser to locate and select your file and click on ‘Open‘ …
The plugin will import the 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, see the article below:
After importing your data, make sure 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 a range of customization settings and options …
The plugin gives you total control over your chart or graph, 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 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 chart or graph looks, click Create Chart …
Your new 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 very soon, this allows you to easily embed charts and graphs into your content …
Charts and graphs added to the Visualizer Library can be accessed by type …
After a chart or graph has been added to the ‘Visualizer Library’, you can edit its details, clone it, or trash it …
Plugin Usage
After you have created a new element and added it to the Visualizer Library, adding it to pages or posts is really simple.
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 the content and click on Add Media …
Click on ‘Visualizations‘ …
Find the element you want to insert into your content and click the “insert” icon …
This will add a shortcode into your content …
After you have added your visual element, click on Publish to publish (or update) your content …
After your post has been updated, click ‘View post’ to see the result …
You will see your chart or graph in your content …
As mentioned earlier, Visualizer also displays responsive visual elements for mobile screens …
As you can see, the Visualizer plugin lets you add and customize dynamic charts and graphs in your content. You can modify your data and the changes will automatically be reflected wherever you have inserted your charts, graphs, comparison bars , etc. in your site. This is very convenient if you’re adding 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 WordPress.
For additional tutorials on editing, copying, deleting and adding data to your charts, refer to the website below:
Congratulations! Now you know how to easily add appealing and dynamic pie charts and graphs to WordPress.
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"This is an awesome training series. I have a pretty good understanding of WordPress already, but this is helping me to move somewhere from intermediate to advanced user!" - Kim Lednum
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