How To Add Charts And Graphs To WordPress
No doubt you’re familiar with the old adage “a picture is worth a thousand words.” This certainly applies when you’re presenting or explaining complex information.
Using charts and graphs is useful for breaking up content containing a disproportionate amount of text, and making technical or statistical data more easily digestible.
You can present data with tables, but if you want your audience to try and make sense of complex data with figures, percentages or relationships more easily, then charts and graphs are perfect for helping them interpret your information.
Charts and graphs help present complex information so your audience can more easily interpret it!
If you want to learn how to display information visually and dynamically on your WordPress site using charts and graphs, this step-by-step tutorial will show you exactly how to create great-looking and updateable charts and graphs to your pages that:
- Your web visitors can engage with
- Lets you upload chart or graph data from your hard drive or a web-based source of data
- Will resize dynamically for mobile viewers
If you are displaying visual data like bar charts, comparison charts or trending graphs containing information that is not going to change (e.g. historical data), a simple method you can use to add this data is to create your charts or graphs using an image editing application, convert these into jpg or png files and then simply add your image files to your post or page.
Use WordPress Chart & Graph Plugins
If you want to easily create dynamic bar charts and graphs in WordPress with no coding skills required, the easiest way to do this is to use a plugin.
Fortunately, there is a great WordPress plugin that is simple to install, easy-to-use and allows you to not only create appealing and dynamic charts and graphs, it also lets you populate your charts and graphs with dynamic information.
Visualizer – WordPress Plugin
Visualizer Plugin URL
You can install the plugin from your WordPress dashboard (see a little further below), or access and download the Visualizer plugin here:
http://wordpress.org/plugins/visualizer
Visualizer Plugin Description
Visualizer is a simple, easy to use and powerful tool that allows you to create, manage and embed beautiful and mobile-responsive graphs into your WordPress posts and pages with 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 contains 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
Visualizer is flexible and customizable, allowing you to use Google Chart Tools with their default setting, or configure an extensive set of options to match the look and feel of your website. A number of options are available for each chart that let you 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 browsers without having to install any extra software.
How To Install Visualizer
Inside your WordPress dashboard, select Plugins > Add New from the main admin menu …
In the Add Plugins screen type in “visualizer” into the search field and click enter …
Locate the item in the search results area 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 page …
Once the plugin has been activated, click on Library …
You can get to the plugin’s ‘library’ screen by choosing Media > Visualizer Library in the main menu …
This brings up the plugin’s Visualizer Library settings screen …
When you first install the plugin, the library section will be empty.
The next step is to add add charts and graphs to your plugin library.
Visualizer Plugin Configuration
To add a graph or chart to the plugin’s library, click on the ‘Add New’ button …
An image gallery displaying all of the different types 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 …
The graph/chart type will open up in a new window.
The next step is to upload a CSV file with all the data you would like to populate your chart or graph with …
When creating your CSV data file, ensure that:
- The first row includes your 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 not sure how to format your CSV file, simply download the sample file supplied 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 and data from your computer select ‘From Computer‘ …
Use the browser to locate and select your file and then click on ‘Open‘ …
The plugin will import your data from the CSV file and display it using the graph/chart type you have chosen …
Upload CSV File From The Web
For a tutorial that shows you 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 the information is correct (if not, click on the ‘Back’ button and reupload a data file containing the right data), and then click ‘Next‘ …
Depending on the chart or graph type you have selected, the plugin will display a number of customization options …
The plugin 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 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 graph or chart, click on the ‘Create Chart’ button …
Your graph or chart will now be added to the ‘Visualizer Library’ section …
Note that each visual element is given a unique ID displayed as a shortcode. As you will see in just a moment, this lets you easily embed graphs and charts into your content …
Charts and graphs 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 it, duplicate it, or delete it …
Visualizer Usage
After creating a chart or graph and adding it to Visualizer, it’s easy to insert it into pages and posts.
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 the ‘Add Media‘ button …
Click on ‘Visualizations‘ …
Find the chart or graph to be added to your content and click the “insert” icon …
This adds a shortcode into your content …
Once you have finished adding the shortcode, click on Publish to publish (or update) your content …
After publishing your page, click ‘View post’ to see the end result …
Your post or page displays the item in the content …
As mentioned earlier, Visualizer also displays responsive charts and graphs for viewing on mobile devices …
As you can see, Visualizer allows you to insert and customize dynamic charts and graphs in your content. You can edit 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 chart data in WordPress very efficient.
The plugin developers have created a series of step-by-step tutorials you can use to learn how to edit, customize and use WordPress Visualizer.
For tutorials on editing, cloning, deleting and adding data to your charts, visit the site below:
Congratulations! Now you know how to create colorful and mobile-responsive charts and graphs in WordPress.
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