10 Easy Ways to Embed Charts and Graphs in WordPress Posts

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Vixo chart graph pluginApart from illustrations, photographs, and code, bloggers often want to present data in a graphical format so that readers can understand it in a better and easy way. By default, you cannot create a graph or chart from the default WordPress post editor. But, there are several scripts, plugins and API libraries available for embedding rich and interactive charts and graphs within your blog posts. Some of these graph plotting solutions comes in the form of handy plugins, while others require script and API calls to display a more complex and data-intensive graph. Depending on your requirements, you may choose the appropriate alternative that is easy-to-use and gives the exact results you're expecting from the solution. Here are some of the best and widely used graph and chart embedding solutions that are perfect for WordPress bloggers.

Vixo chart graph plugin
Vixo Chart Graph Plugin - It's not just a simple chart embedding plugin. You can insert graphs, charts, spreadsheets, tables, forms and much more through this handy extension. All the embedded objects included through this plugin are dynamic in nature. This means that if you modify the data associated with the object at the back end, the graph or chart automatically modifies accordingly. Bloggers can use shortcode to embed these dynamic charts anywhere in the blog post. You can also adjust the height and width of the graph through shortcode parameters.

ChartBoot plugin for WordPress
ChartBoot for WordPress - This is yet another handy extension for embedding Google charts within your WordPress blog posts. Through this plugin, you can directly create and edit your Google chart from within the dashboard. You can also import the chart data from an Excel sheet. Once the chart is complete, it is embedded in a shortcode within the post. You can freely change the chart position by simply copy-pasting the shortcode at the appropriate place. This plugin also supports several data and chart types to customize the graph as per your needs.

Easy graphs plugin
Easy Graphs - It is one of the most flexible plugins to plot simple bar, line and pie charts in your blog posts. It has a flexible shortcode mechanism that accepts multiple parameters to provide data and different other information to render the chart. Due to the facility of directly providing data within shortcode, an average blogger will find it very easy-to-use. If you want to compare two data values through a pie chart, then this plugin should be a preferred choice. I would certainly like label support in this plugin, on which the plugin author is already working.

Google Chart Generator plugin
Google Chart Generator - Google provides a powerful and flexible chart creating API for creating and embedding rich graphs within any web page. This plugin utilizes that API and lets you create custom charts within minutes. You simply have to provide data, labels, titles and other essential information within a chart creating wizard and the rest of the work is done by the plugin. You can easily embed the generated chart within a custom page or post. You can also customize the colors of the chart and can also embed it in the sidebar within a widget.

JSXGraph plugin
JSXGraph - Graphics with JavaScript - If you want to embed geometrical and scientific charts and graphs in your blog posts, then this plugin is made just for you. It uses a powerful JavaScript library to generate complex mathematical charts and graphs. All the charts created through this plugin are dynamic and are updated automatically as the related data is modified by the blogger. This plugin is very useful for education blogs where you need to embed a different kind of graphs and charts for the students. This plugin doesn't put any kind of load on your web server.

GChart Plugin
GChart - This premium plugin provides rich set of features to create and embed different types of highly customizable charts and graphs within your content. All the embedded charts are dynamic and are updated in real time whenever the source data is changed. It includes a collection of chart templates to choose from so that you can select the preferred visual format right from the start. It provides dozens of chart customization settings to modify the graph as per your needs. Charts embedded through this plugin are rendered perfectly even in old browsers.

Google Chart Wizard
Chart Wizard - Large number of webmasters and bloggers use this powerful chart creating wizard powered by Google's visualization API to embed rich graphs and charts in their blog posts or web pages. It has a flexible chart editor as well as a gallery of chart templates to choose from. Once the chart creation process is complete, you can either get direct links for embedding the chart in an email and within an instant messaging window or you can use the HTML code for inserting it into your blog posts. Advanced users can also use the API code generated through this wizard.

Google docs spreadsheet chart
Google Docs Spreadsheet Charts - You can also use Google Docs spreadsheets for both creating rich interactive and dynamic charts for your WordPress blog. The data can be provided right within the spreadsheet. Once the chart is ready, press the 'Publish chart' option to get the embed code which can be easily pasted anywhere on your blog. The chart is directly linked to your Google Docs spreadsheet and updates automatically as you make some changes in the spreadsheet data. I'll highly recommend using this method as it's easy and is an extremely reliable way to embed charts in blog posts.

Easy chart builder plugin
Easy Chart Builder - Creating charts and graphs through this plugin is very easy and intuitive. You can easily configure the global settings for the charts. The shortcode supports all the chart configuration parameters letting you supply the complete chart data and customization parameters in one go. This helps you easily create a chart without leaving the post editor. Charts created through this plugin automatically scales with the size of the viewport and renders well on mobile devices too. Apart from regular blog posts, you can also embed charts in widgets and custom pages.

Google Visualization Charts plugin
Google Visualization Charts - This plugin is ideal for plotting different kinds of charts within your blog posts. You can directly enter all the parameters for the chart through a user-friendly shortcode to render it smoothly at the desired place within the post. Once the plugin is activated, it automatically fetches the Google visualization API code to create the charts. It also supports scaling for smooth display of charts on tablets and smartphones. I've also tested it by resizing the browser's window and found that the chart was scaling accordingly without any distortion.