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’re trying to present and explain data.
Using graphs and charts is great for breaking up content that has a disproportionate amount of text, and making technical data a lot easier to understand.
You can present information using tables, but if you want people to try and make sense of complex information with figures, trends or comparisons easily, then charts and graphs are perfect for helping them understand your data.
Charts and graphs help you present complex data so your audience can more easily understand it!
Need to add charts and graphs to WordPress? This step-by-step tutorial shows you how to use WordPress Visualizer – an easy-to-use and powerful plugin that allows you to create, manage and insert appealing and dynamic graphs and charts into your WordPress posts and pages that:
- Your visitors can interact with
- Lets you upload graph or chart data from your computer or a web-based source of data
- Will dynamically resize for mobile viewing
If you plan to display visual data like pie charts, comparison data or trending graphs containing information that is not going to change (e.g. historical data), a simple method you can use is to create the graphs or charts using an image editing application, convert these into images and then simply insert your image files into your site content.
Use WordPress Chart & Graph Plugins
If you want to insert interactive bar charts and graphs into 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 sites that is simple to install, easy-to-use and allows you to not only create colorful and interactive graphs and charts, it also lets you populate your charts and graphs with updateable data.
WordPress Plugin: Visualizer
Plugin URL
You can install the plugin from your WP dashboard (see a little further below), or download Visualizer here:
http://wordpress.org/plugins/visualizer
Visualizer Description
WP Visualizer is a simple, easy to use and powerful tool that lets you create, manage and embed great-looking charts and graphs into your WordPress posts and pages in just a few simple steps.
WordPress 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 components are needed.
Visualizer also comes with a variety of built-in optimized for 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 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 browsers without having to install any extra software.
Plugin Installation
Inside your WP admin area, select Plugins > Add New from the dashboard menu …
In the Add Plugins page type in search for “visualizer” and hit enter …
Locate Visualizer in the search results section and click Install Now …
Click OK to continue …
Activate the plugin after installation is successful …
You can also activate the plugin in the Plugins section …
After the plugin has been activated, click on Library …
You can get to the plugin’s ‘library’ screen by choosing Media > Visualizer Library from your main menu …
This brings up the plugin’s Visualizer Library page …
When you first install the plugin, the library section will be empty.
Your next step is to add add charts and graphs to the plugin library.
Visualizer Plugin Configuration
To add a new graph or chart to the library, click on Add New …
You will see all the different types of charts and graphs available.
Select the graph or chart type you would like to create and click on the ‘Next’ button …
The graph/chart type will pop up in a lightbox.
The next step is to upload a CSV file containing your data …
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, datetime, 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 spreadsheet provided with the plugin.
Next, 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 data file and then click on ‘Open‘ …
The plugin will import the data from the CSV file and display it using the graph/chart type you have previously chosen …
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, 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‘ …
Depending on the chart or graph type you’ve selected, the plugin will display various 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 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’re satisfied with the look of your graph or chart, click Create Chart …
Your chart or graph 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 allows you to easily embed graphs and charts into your content …
Graphs and charts added to the Visualizer Library can easily be accessed by type …
After a new chart or graph has been added to the ‘Visualizer Library’, you can edit it, duplicate it, or delete it …
Visualizer Plugin Usage
After creating a element and adding it to the Library, it’s very simple to add it to your posts and pages.
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 inserted into your content and click the “insert” icon …
This will add a shortcode into your content …
Once you have added your item, click on Publish to publish (or update) your content …
After publishing your post, click ‘View post’ to see the results …
Your post or page displays the chart or graph in the location where you have added the shortcode …
As mentioned earlier, Visualizer also displays responsive visual elements for mobile devices …
As you can see, 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 makes managing dynamic graph information in WordPress very efficient.
The plugin developers have created a series of tutorials you can use to learn how to edit, customize and use the plugin.
For additional tutorials on editing, cloning, deleting and adding data to your charts, refer to the site below:
Congratulations! Now you know how to easily insert great-looking charts and graphs into your WordPress content.
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