How To Add Charts And Graphs To WordPress

Learn how to create, manage and embed stunning dynamic and interactive charts and graphs into your WordPress posts and pages with a few simple steps …

How To Add Charts And Graphs To WordPress

Embedding Graphs Into WordPress

You’re probably familiar with the adage “a picture is worth a thousand words.” This is certainly true when you are trying to present or explain data.

Charts and graphs can help to make statistical data more easily digestible.

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

Create Charts In A WordPress Post

Charts and graphs help you present complex information so people can more easily interpret it!

Need to add charts and graphs to your WordPress content? This tutorial shows you how to use WP Visualizer – an easy-to-use and powerful plugin that lets you create, manage and embed eye-catching and mobile-responsive graphs into your WordPress posts and pages that:

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

Visualizer Plugin For WordPress

Practical Tip

If you are displaying visual data like pie charts, comparison bars or trending graphs that contain static information (e.g. historical data), an easier option is to create the charts or graphs using a desktop application, convert these into jpg and png files and then simply insert the files and an image into your posts or pages.

Use WordPress Chart & Graph Plugins

If you want to add interactive bar charts and pie charts to WordPress posts 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 that is simple to install, easy-to-use and allows you to not only create beautiful and mobile-responsive charts and graphs, it also lets you populate your charts and graphs with updatable data.

Visualizer

WP Plugin: Visualizer

Visualizer Plugin URL

You can install the plugin in your WP dashboard (we will explain how to do this further down the page), or access and download the Visualizer plugin here:

http://wordpress.org/plugins/visualizer

Visualizer Description

WP Visualizer is a simple, easy to use and powerful plugin that allows you to create, manage and insert attractive and interactive graphs and charts into your WordPress posts and pages in 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 additional addons are needed.

WordPress Visualizer also comes with 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 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 web design. Several 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 web visitors can see your charts and graphs on their mobile web browsers without having to install extra software.

Plugin Installation

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

WordPress Plugin Tutorial

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

Install WordPress Plugin: Visualizer

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

Install Visualizer

Click OK to proceed …

Install Visualizer Plugin For WordPress

Activate the plugin after successfully installing it …

Install Visualizer Plugin For WordPress

You can also activate the plugin in the Plugins section …

Install Visualizer Plugin For WordPress

After the plugin has been activated, click on Library

Install Visualizer

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

WP Plugin Tutorial

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

Visualizer

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

The next step is to add the charts and graphs to your library that you will want to insert into your content.

How To Configure The Visualizer Plugin

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

WP Plugin: Visualizer

An image gallery displaying all the kinds of charts available will come up on your screen.

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

WP Plugin: Visualizer

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 …

Visualizer Plugin For WordPress

Important

When creating your CSV data file, make sure that:

  • Your first row includes the column headings.
  • The second row contains the series type (e.g. boolean, date, etc.)

The screenshot below shows how to format your data correctly …

Visualizer Plugin For WordPress

If you are unsure about how to format your CSV file, just refer to the sample supplied with the plugin.

Once you have done this, 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‘ …

Visualizer - WP Plugin

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

Visualizer - WP Plugin

The plugin imports the data and displays it using the graph/chart type you have chosen …

WP Plugin: Visualizer

Upload CSV File From The Web

Visualizer

Important

To learn how to create, save and publish data to a Visualizer chart or graph using Google Spreadsheet, see the article below:

After importing your data, check that all of your information is correct (if not, click on the ‘Back’ button and reupload a new data file with the correct data), and then click ‘Next‘ …

Visualizer

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

Visualizer - WP Plugin

Visualizer gives you complete control over your information, and updates your display in real time …

Visualizer - WordPress Plugin

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).

Visualizer Plugin For WordPress

Once you’re satisfied with the look of your graph or chart, click Create Chart

WP Plugin: Visualizer

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

Visualizer

Note that every visual element is given a unique ID displayed in a shortcode. As you will see very soon, this lets you easily embed graphs and charts into your content …

WordPress Plugin: Visualizer

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

Visualizer - WordPress Plugin

After adding a new element to the ‘Visualizer Library’, you can edit its details, clone it, or delete it …

Visualizer - WP Plugin

Visualizer Usage

After creating a new element and adding it to Visualizer, adding it to a page is really simple.

First, create a new post or page (or open an existing one) …

Visualizer Plugin For WordPress

Next, place your mouse cursor where you want to insert your visual element into the content and click on the ‘Add Media‘ button …

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Click on ‘Visualizations‘ …

Visualizer

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

WP Plugin: Visualizer

This will add a shortcode into your content …

Visualizer

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

Publishing A WordPress Post

Once the page/post has been published, click ‘View post’ to see it …

Visualizer - WP Plugin

Your post or page displays the element in the location you specified …

Visualizer - WP Plugin

As mentioned earlier, Visualizer also displays responsive graphs for mobile device screens …

Visualizer - WordPress Plugin

As you can see, WordPress Visualizer lets you add and customize dynamic charts and graphs in your content. You can edit your data and the changes will automatically be reflected throughout your website. This is a real time-saving benefit of the plugin if you’re managing interactive chart data in WordPress.

Tutorial

The plugin developers have created a number of tutorials you can use to learn how to edit, customize and use the plugin.

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

Congratulations! Now you know how to easily add colorful and mobile-responsive bar charts and graphs to WordPress.

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"I have used the tutorials to teach all of my clients and it has probably never been so easy for everyone to learn WordPress ... Now I don't need to buy all these very expensive video courses that often don't deliver what they promise." - Stefan Wendt, Internet Marketing Success Group

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Originally published as How To Add Charts And Graphs To WordPress.