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 great for breaking up long text passages, and making technical data more easily digestible.
You can present information using tables, but if you want people to try and make sense of complex data with figures, trends or comparisons more easily, then charts and graphs are perfect for helping them understand your data.
Charts and graphs help present complex data so your audience can more easily interpret it!
Need to add charts or graphs to WordPress? This step-by-step tutorial shows you how to use WP Visualizer – a simple, easy to use and powerful tool that lets you create, manage and insert eye-catching and dynamic graphs and charts into your WordPress posts and pages in a few mouse clicks that:
- Your visitors can engage with
- Allows you to upload data from your hard drive or an online data source
- Is responsive for mobile screens
If you plan to display visual data like pie charts, comparison graphs or trending graphs containing static information (e.g. historical data), a simple method you can use is to create your charts or graphs using a desktop application, convert these into jpg or png files and then simply add your image to your pages or posts.
Use WordPress Chart & Graph Plugins
If you want to easily add dynamic bar charts and pie charts to WordPress content 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 attractive and mobile-responsive graphs and charts, it also lets you populate your charts and graphs with updatable content.
Visualizer
Visualizer URL
You can install the plugin in your WP dashboard (explained a little further below), or download Visualizer the WP plugin repository using the link below:
http://wordpress.org/plugins/visualizer
Visualizer Plugin Description
WordPress Visualizer is a simple, easy to use and powerful tool that lets you create, manage and embed attractive and interactive graphs into your WordPress posts and pages in 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 components are needed.
WordPress Visualizer also comes with a variety of charts 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
The plugin 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 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 visitors can see your charts and graphs on their mobile web browsers without having to install any additional software.
Plugin Installation
Inside your WordPress administration area, select Plugins > Add New from the dashboard menu …
In the Add Plugins screen type in search for “visualizer” and hit enter …
Locate the item in the search results section and click the “Install Now” button …
Click OK to continue …
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 choosing Media > Visualizer Library from your admin menu …
This takes you to the plugin’s Visualizer Library page …
After installing the plugin, the library contains no charts.
The next step is to add add charts and graphs to the library.
How To Configure Visualizer
To add a new chart or graph to the Visualizer library, click on ‘Add New’ …
A visual gallery displaying all of the different kinds of charts and graphs available will load on your screen.
Select the graph or chart type you would like to create and click on the ‘Next’ button …
Your selected 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:
- Your first row contains the column headings.
- Your second row includes the series type (e.g. number, date, etc.)
The screenshot below shows how to format your data …
If you are unsure about how to format your CSV file, simply download the sample CSV file provided with the plugin.
Next, 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 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 imports your data from the CSV file and displays it using the graph/chart type chosen …
Upload CSV File From The Web
For a tutorial that explains how to create, save and publish data to a Visualizer chart or graph using Google Spreadsheet, go here:
After importing the data, check that all of the information is correct (if not, click on the ‘Back’ button and reupload a new data file with the right data), and click ‘Next‘ …
Depending on the chart or graph type selected, the plugin displays various customization settings …
Visualizer gives you complete control of 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 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’re satisfied with the look of your chart or graph, click on the ‘Create Chart’ button …
The new graph or chart will now be added to the Visualizer ‘Library’ …
Note that new elements are given a unique ID displayed in a shortcode. As you will see in a moment, this allows you to easily insert graphs and charts into your content …
Graphs and charts added to the Visualizer Library can easily be accessed by type …
After a chart or graph has been added to the ‘Visualizer Library’, you can edit its details, duplicate it, or delete it …
Plugin Usage
Once you’ve created a element and added it to the Library, adding it to a page is very 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 chart or graph to be inserted into your content and click the “insert” icon …
This inserts a shortcode into your content …
Once you have added your item, click on Publish to publish (or update) your page or post …
Once the post has been published, click ‘View post’ to see the results …
The graph or chart will show up in the location you specified …
As mentioned earlier, the plugin also displays responsive charts and graphs 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 your changes will automatically be reflected wherever you have inserted your charts, graphs, comparison bars , etc. in your site. This is a real time-saving feature of the plugin if you’re managing interactive graph data 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 Visualizer.
For additional tutorials on editing, cloning, deleting and adding data to your charts, visit the website below:
Congratulations! Now you know how to easily insert mobile-responsive pie charts and graphs into your WordPress pages.
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