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’re presenting and explaining data.
Graphs and charts help to make technical or statistical data more easily digestible.
You can use tables to present information, but if you want people to try and interpret complex information with numbers, percentages or comparisons quickly, then charts and graphs allow you to present data in an intelligent and meaningful way that can be easily processed.
Graphs and charts help explain complex information so your audience can more easily interpret it!
Need to add charts and graphs to WordPress? This tutorial shows you how to use the WordPress Visualizer plugin – a simple, easy to use and powerful tool that allows you to create, manage and embed eye-catching and mobile-responsive charts and graphs into your WordPress posts and pages in a few simple steps that:
- Your web visitors can interact with
- Lets you upload graph or chart data from your hard drive or a web-based data source
- Will dynamically resize for mobile viewing
If you are displaying visual data like pie charts, comparison data or trending graphs containing static information (e.g. historical data), an easier option is to create the graphs or charts using a desktop application, convert these into images and then simply insert your image into your page or post.
Use WordPress Chart & Graph Plugins
If you want to easily create interactive bar charts and pie charts in your WordPress posts with no coding skills required, the easiest way to do this is to use a plugin.
Fortunately, there is a free plugin for WordPress that is simple to install, easy-to-use and allows you to not only create eye-catching and dynamic graphs and charts, it also lets you populate your charts and graphs with updateable information.
Visualizer Plugin For WordPress
Visualizer URL
You can install the plugin inside your WordPress dashboard (see a little further below), or access and download WordPress Visualizer here:
http://wordpress.org/plugins/visualizer
Visualizer Plugin Description
WP Visualizer is an easy-to-use and powerful plugin that lets you create, manage and insert interactive graphs and charts into your WordPress posts and pages with just 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 addons are required.
Visualizer also provides a variety of built-in 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
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. A number of options are available for each chart that let you fully 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 any additional plugins.
Plugin Installation
Inside your WP administration area, select Plugins > Add New from the main admin menu …
In the Add Plugins page type “visualizer” into the search field and click 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 page …
Once your 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 options page …
After installing the plugin, the library will contain no charts.
The next step is to add add charts and graphs to your library.
Visualizer Plugin Configuration
To add a new graph or chart to the Visualizer library, click on the ‘Add New’ button …
You will see all of the built-in kinds of charts and 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 your data …
When creating your CSV data file, ensure that:
- Your first row includes your column headings.
- Your second row contains the series type (e.g. number, date, etc.)
The screenshot below shows how to format your data as required …
If you are not sure how to format your CSV file, just refer to the sample provided with the plugin.
Once you have done this, 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 from your hard drive select ‘From Computer‘ …
Locate and select your data file and click on ‘Open‘ …
The plugin will import your data and display it using the graph/chart type you have previously 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, go here:
After importing the data, check that all of your information is correct (if not, click on the ‘Back’ button and reupload a data file with the correct data), and then click ‘Next‘ …
Depending on the chart or graph type you’ve picked, the plugin displays various customization options and settings …
The plugin gives you total control over your information, 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 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 are happy with how your graph or chart is looking, click Create Chart …
The chart or graph will be added to the ‘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 insert charts and graphs into your content …
Charts and graphs added to the Visualizer Library can easily be accessed by type …
After adding a new graph or chart to the ‘Visualizer Library’, you can edit it, duplicate it, or trash it …
Plugin Usage
After creating a new chart or graph and adding it to Visualizer, 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 element to be inserted into your content and click on the “insert” icon …
This inserts a shortcode for the element into your content …
Once you have added the shortcode, click on Publish to publish (or update) your page or post …
Once your page/post has been updated, click ‘View post’ to see the results …
The chart or graph will show up in where you placed the shortcode …
As mentioned previously, Visualizer also displays responsive charts and graphs for mobile devices …
As you can see, the Visualizer plugin 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 throughout your website. This is very convenient if you’re working with dynamic graph data in WordPress.
The plugin developers have created a number of tutorials you can refer to 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 insert colorful and dynamic bar charts and graphs into your WordPress pages and posts with WP Visualizer.
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"These tutorials have so much information and are easy to understand. If you use WordPress or plan to in the future these will help you with everything you need to know." - Valisa (Mesa, Arizona)
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