How To Add Charts And Graphs To WordPress
You’ve heard the saying “a picture is worth a thousand words.” This certainly applies when you are trying to present or explain complex information.
Using graphs and charts is a great way to make technical or statistical data a lot easier to understand.
You can present information with tables, but if you want your audience to try and interpret complex information with figures, percentages and relationships more easily, then charts and graphs are perfect for helping them interpret your information.
Charts and graphs help you present complex data so your audience can more easily understand it!
Need to add charts or graphs to your WordPress content? This tutorial shows you how to use WP Visualizer – a simple, easy to use and powerful tool that allows you to create, manage and embed beautiful charts and graphs into your WordPress posts and pages with a few mouse clicks that:
- Your site visitors can interact with
- Allows you to add data from your hard drive or an online source of data
- Will dynamically resize for mobile viewing
If you plan to display visual data like bar charts, comparison graphs or trending graphs containing static information (e.g. historical data), a simple method you can use to display this information is to create the graphs or charts using an image editing application, convert these into images and then simply insert your files and an image into your site content.
Use WordPress Chart & Graph Plugins
If you want to add interactive bar charts and graphs to WordPress 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 great-looking and interactive charts and graphs, it also lets you populate your charts and graphs with updateable information.
WP Plugin: Visualizer
Visualizer Plugin URL
You can install the plugin inside your WP dashboard (explained further down the page), or download WP Visualizer here:
http://wordpress.org/plugins/visualizer
Plugin Description
The Visualizer plugin is a simple, easy to use and powerful tool that allows you to create, manage and insert interactive charts into your WordPress posts and pages in just 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 plugins are required.
WordPress Visualizer also comes with 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
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 web design. Various options are available for each chart that let you further 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 extra software.
How To Install WordPress Visualizer
From your WordPress administration area, select Plugins > Add New from the main sidebar menu …
In the Add Plugins page type in search for “visualizer” and hit enter …
Locate the plugin in the search results area and click Install Now …
Click OK to proceed …
Activate the plugin after successfully installing it …
You can also activate the plugin in the Plugins section …
Once your plugin has been activated, click on Library …
You can also get to the plugin’s ‘library’ screen by selecting Media > Visualizer Library in your dashboard menu …
This brings up the plugin’s Visualizer Library options …
After installing the plugin, this section will be empty.
The next step is to add add charts and graphs to the library.
Plugin Configuration
To add a chart or graph to the library, click on the ‘Add New’ button …
A gallery displaying all of the default types of graphs available will come up 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 lightbox.
The next step is to upload a CSV file that contains your data …
When creating your CSV data file, make sure that:
- The first row includes your column headings.
- Your second row contains the series type (e.g. boolean, timeofday, etc.)
The screenshot below shows how to format your data …
If you are not sure how to format your data CSV, just study the sample file supplied with the plugin.
Once you have created your CSV file, 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 hard drive select ‘From Computer‘ …
Locate and select your data file and then click on ‘Open‘ …
The plugin will import your data from the CSV file and display 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:
After importing the data, make sure that all of the information is correct (if not, click on the ‘Back’ button and reupload a new data file containing the correct data), and then click ‘Next‘ …
Depending on the chart or graph type you have selected, the plugin will display various customization options …
The plugin gives you full control over your information, and updates your display in real time …
For example, the pie chart offers various configurable options, including:
- 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 are happy with the way your graph or chart appears, click Create Chart …
The new graph or chart will be added to the ‘Visualizer Library’ section …
Note that every new element is given a unique ID displayed as a shortcode. As you will see in just a moment, this allows you to insert charts and graphs into your WordPress content very quickly …
Charts and graphs added to the Visualizer Library can easily be accessed by type …
After adding a new item to the ‘Visualizer Library’, you can edit its details, clone it, or delete it …
Visualizer Usage
After creating a new element and adding it to Visualizer, it’s simple to insert it into a page or post.
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 the ‘Add Media‘ button …
Click on ‘Visualizations‘ …
Find the graph or chart to be added to your content and click on the “insert” icon …
This will add a shortcode for the element into your content …
Once you have added your item, click on Publish to publish (or update) your content …
After publishing the page, click ‘View post’ to see the result …
Your item will display in the location you specified …
As mentioned earlier, Visualizer also displays responsive charts for mobile viewing …
As you can see, Visualizer lets you insert and customize dynamic charts and graphs in your content. You can modify your data and your changes will automatically be reflected throughout your site. This is a real time-saver if you’re adding dynamic graph information in WordPress.
The developers of this plugin have created a series of tutorials you can use to learn how to edit, customize and use Visualizer.
For tutorials on editing, copying, deleting and adding data to your charts, refer to the site below:
Congratulations! Now you know how to create colorful and dynamic pie charts and graphs in WordPress with WP Visualizer plugin.
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