How To Add Charts And Graphs To WordPress
You’ve no doubt heard the adage “a picture is worth a thousand words.” This is certainly true when you are trying to present or explain complex data.
Using graphs and charts is useful for breaking up long passage of technical information, and making statistical data simpler and easier to understand.
You can present information with tables, but if you want people to try and interpret complex information with numbers, percentages or relationships quickly, then charts and graphs are perfect for helping them understand your information.
Graphs and charts help present complex information so people can more easily understand it!
Need to add charts or graphs to your WordPress content? This step-by-step tutorial shows you how to use WP Visualizer – an easy-to-use and powerful tool that lets you create, manage and embed beautiful and mobile-responsive charts into your WordPress posts and pages with just a few simple steps that:
- Your visitors can engage with
- Allows you to add data from your hard drive or a web-based source of data
- Will resize dynamically for mobile viewing
If you plan to display visual data like bar charts, comparison bars or trending graphs containing static information (e.g. historical data), an easier option is to create the graphs or charts using an image editing application, convert these into images and then simply add the images to your posts or pages.
Use WordPress Chart & Graph Plugins
If you want to easily create interactive bar charts and pie graphs in your WordPress posts with no coding skills required, the easiest way to do this is to use a plugin.
Fortunately, there is a WordPress plugin that is simple to install, easy-to-use and allows you to not only create beautiful and mobile-responsive graphs and charts, it also lets you populate your charts and graphs with updateable data.
WP Plugin: Visualizer
Plugin URL
You can install the plugin in your WP dashboard (see further down the page), or download the Visualizer plugin the WordPress plugin repository using the link below:
http://wordpress.org/plugins/visualizer
Plugin Description
Visualizer is a simple, easy to use and powerful plugin for WordPress that lets you create, manage and embed stunning and interactive charts and 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 additional plugins are needed.
The plugin also provides a variety of built-in that are optimized to address 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 also 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 allow you to further 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 visitors can see your charts and graphs on their mobile browsers without requiring the installation of any additional software.
Plugin Installation
Inside your WordPress admin area, select Plugins > Add New from the navigation sidebar menu …
In the Add Plugins page type in “visualizer” into the search field and hit enter …
Locate Visualizer in the search results section and click the “Install Now” button …
Click OK to proceed …
Activate the plugin after successfully installing it …
You can also activate the plugin in the Plugins page …
Once your plugin has been activated, click on Library …
You can get to the plugin’s ‘library’ screen by choosing Media > Visualizer Library from the admin menu …
This takes you to the plugin’s Visualizer Library settings …
After installing the plugin, the library contains no charts.
The next step is to add add charts and graphs to your library.
How To Configure The Visualizer Plugin
To add a new chart or graph to the plugin’s 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 graph/chart type will open up in a lightbox.
The next step is to upload a CSV file with all the data you want your chart or graph to be populated with …
When creating your CSV data file, ensure that:
- The first row contains your column headings.
- The second row contains the series type (e.g. string, date, etc.)
The screenshot below shows how to format your data correctly …
If you are not sure how to format your data CSV, just use the sample that comes 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 from your computer select ‘From Computer‘ …
Use the browser to locate and select your file and click on ‘Open‘ …
The plugin will import the data and display it using the graph/chart type you have 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, go here:
After importing your 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 click ‘Next‘ …
Depending on the chart or graph type you’ve selected, the plugin displays a number of customization options …
The plugin 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, 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’re happy with the look of your chart or graph, click on the ‘Create Chart’ button …
Your new chart or graph 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 shortly, this lets you embed graphs and charts into your pages easily and quickly …
Graphs and charts added to the Visualizer Library can be accessed by type …
After a new item has been added to the ‘Visualizer Library’, you can edit it, clone it, or trash it …
Visualizer Usage
Once you’ve created a new graph or chart and added it to the Visualizer Library, adding it to a page or post is really very 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‘ …
Find the element you want to add to your content and click the “insert” icon …
This will add a shortcode for the element into your content …
After you have finished adding your visual element, click on Publish to publish (or update) your page or post …
Once the page has been published, click ‘View post’ to see it …
The item will show up in where you have added the shortcode …
As mentioned previously, the plugin also displays responsive visual elements for mobile browsers …
As you can see, WordPress Visualizer allows you to insert 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 site. This makes working with dynamic chart information in WordPress really efficient.
The plugin developers have created a number of step-by-step tutorials you can refer to for ways to edit, customize and use Visualizer.
For additional tutorials on editing, copying, deleting and adding data to your charts, visit the website below:
Congratulations! Now you know how to create stunning and interactive bar charts and graphs in WordPress with WP Visualizer plugin.
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