Because it is technically still in beta (a testing phase), many may not be aware that Google has a free and sophisticated chart/graph creation tool. Once you make up your chart, you can easily embed it into a page or a post on your site — either through an embed code or with a plugin.
Getting Started with Google Chart Tools
Perhaps the easiest place to start is with the Chart Wizard.
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Once you have your chart/graph the way you like it, copy the embed code on the right-hand side. And then paste the code into the HTML view of your WordPress editor.
And here’s the result.
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Google Chart Generator Plugin
I did find a handy plugin (Google Chart Generator) that lets you hook into the Google Chart tool API without need for an account or any type of sign-up; however, its one drawback is that you don’t get all the options you would get if you went directly to Google (including styling and color options).
Once installed, you will find the settings in your admin area (Settings > Google Chart Generator).
In order to get the chart to appear once you’re satisfied with it, copy the URL provided, and then paste it into your post via the media uploader. Paste it into the URL box of the media uploader as if you were pulling in an image from another site (because that’s essentially what you’re doing).
And here’s the result.
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Nice! I didn’t even know that was there. I’ve been using the beta real-time feature to guage traffic in response to tweets/facebook posts that include URLs back to my site.
Thanks for the tip!!
That’s sweet, the author must have put a lot of work in that plugin, so I think he deserves to be at least mentioned — well done Brock Angelo, even though it’s quite outdated ;)
You should give it a try to my ChartBoot plugin.
It allows yuo to embed newest Google Charts (not images charts but google interactive charts).
At the plugin page you have some screenshots and a tutorial video. I just released the free 2.0 version yesterday.
I’m looking forward to hearing from you. Any questions, comments or suggestions are welcome.
I have been trying to integrate a Google Chart into my WordPress site for a long time. I like the ChartBoot plugin. It seems like a great step in the right direction.
What I really want to do, though, is to create a chart on the fly from data that a visitor enters into a form.
I’m not really a programmer, but I have figured out how to get the form data into my database & I’ve figured out how to query the database to display the data on a regular HTML page outside of WordPress.
But all the examples on the Google Chart sites show how to do this with Javascript & I haven’t quite figured out how to run all of that Javascript in a WordPress page.
Am I at the point of having to go to programming school & write my own Plugin??? Ha.
Any suggestions??
Thanks!
Great article. Not a lot of people working on this.
Hi Kelly – You might try asking in the WPMU DEV community (http://premium.wpmudev.org/forums/). There are a number of people there who may be able to help you. You might also try contacting author of the plugin above (as he is already familiar with subject matter).
Hi Kelly , if you are still interested in diving into the details, my proposal to understand together if ChartBoot applies to your needs is to contact me at minimal ZONE providing more details on your requirement.
Best regards, luca.