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 presenting and explaining complex information.

Charts and graphs help to make technical or statistical data a lot easier to understand.

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

Graphs and charts help present complex information so people can more easily understand it!

Need to add charts or graphs to your WordPress posts? This step-by-step tutorial shows you how to use WP Visualizer – a simple, easy to use and powerful WP plugin that allows you to create, manage and insert appealing and interactive graphs and charts into your WordPress posts and pages in a few mouse clicks that:

• Your visitors can engage with
• Lets you add chart or graph data from your computer or a web-based data source
• Will resize dynamically for viewing on mobile devices

If you plan to display visual data like pie charts, comparison data or trending graphs containing static information (e.g. historical data), an easier option is to create your charts or graphs using a desktop application, convert these into images and then simply add the image to your posts or pages.

Use WordPress Chart & Graph Plugins

If you want to add interactive bars and graphs to WordPress with no coding skills required, the easiest way to do this is to use a plugin.

Fortunately, there is a plugin for WordPress sites 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 updateable content.

Visualizer

Visualizer Plugin URL

You can install the plugin in your WP dashboard (explained further below), or download WordPress Visualizer from the link below:

http://wordpress.org/plugins/visualizer

Plugin Description

Visualizer is an easy-to-use and powerful tool that allows you to create, manage and embed appealing and interactive graphs into your WordPress posts and pages with a few simple steps.

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 extra components are needed.

WordPress Visualizer also comes with a variety of charts 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

Visualizer is a flexible and customizable plugin, 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 customize their look and feel.

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 web browsers without having to install extra software.

Plugin Installation

Inside your WordPress administration area, select Plugins > Add New from the main menu …

In the Add Plugins screen type in “visualizer” into the search field and click enter …

Locate the item in the search results screen and click Install Now …

Click OK to continue …

Activate the plugin after successfully installing it …

You can also activate the plugin in the Plugins area …

After the plugin has been activated, click on Library …

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

This takes you to the plugin’s Visualizer Library settings …

When you first install the plugin, the library will contain no charts.

Your next step is to add the charts and graphs to your library that you will want to display in your content.

How To Configure The Visualizer Plugin

To add a new chart or graph to the library, click on the ‘Add New’ button …

You will be presented with all of the kinds of graphs available.

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

The selected graph/chart type will pop up in a new window.

The next step is to upload a CSV file with the data you would like to populate your chart or graph with …

When creating your CSV data file, ensure that:

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

The screenshot below shows how to format your data …

If you are unsure about how to format your data CSV, just download the sample 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 your CSV file from your computer select ‘From Computer‘ …

Use the browser to locate and select your file and then click on ‘Open‘ …

The plugin will import the 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:

• How To Populate Data Using Google Spreadsheet

After importing the data, make sure 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 selected, the plugin will display a number of customization settings …

Visualizer gives you full control of 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 chart title settings, 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 happy with the look of your chart or graph, click Create Chart …

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

Note that new visual elements are given a unique ID displayed in a shortcode. As you will see in a moment, this lets you add graphs and charts to your content easily and quickly …

Charts and graphs added to the Visualizer Library can be accessed by their type …

After an item has been added to the ‘Visualizer Library’, you can edit it, clone it, or delete it …

Plugin Usage

After creating a graph or chart and adding it to Visualizer, adding it to a post or page is quite simple.

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

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

Click on ‘Visualizations‘ …

Select the element you want to insert into your content and click on the “insert” icon …

This will place a shortcode into your content …

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

After updating your page, click ‘View post’ to see it …

The element will appear in where you placed the shortcode …

As mentioned earlier, the plugin also displays responsive graphs for mobile browsers …

As you can see, Visualizer lets you insert and customize dynamic charts and graphs in your content. You can update your data and your changes will automatically be reflected wherever you have inserted your charts, graphs, comparison bars , etc. in your site. This makes working with dynamic graph information in WordPress very easy.

The developers of this plugin have created a number of step-by-step tutorials you can use to learn how to edit, customize and use WordPress Visualizer.

For additional tutorials on editing, copying, deleting and adding data to your charts, visit the site below:

• WordPress Visualizer – Additional Tutorials

Congratulations! Now you know how to easily add colorful and interactive pie charts and graphs to your WordPress pages and posts with WP Visualizer plugin.

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