Why don’t more blogs have graphs? Charts? As an engineer, I use graphs and charts to display data and to show relationships between data sets. Charts are a simple way to convey complex ideas and to explain connections between data that can be challenging with just text and tables. I suppose you could make jpg of the graph then handle it like a photo but that sounds so 1990s! I started by exploring the WordPress plugins for graphs and charts. There was a small collection but they did not seem very easy to use and they lacked some features I was looking for as a heavy duty Excel user like adding a trend line.
Then I found this page that changed my world: https://en.support.wordpress.com/google-docs/ . Why not embed a Google Sheets into a WordPress post? Sounds great! Google Sheets has excellent tools for making great looking graphs and is very easy to use. No new plugins to add and learn. It requires a few steps and requires looking at some code, but don’t worry I will walk you through it.
Tip 1: You are publishing this graph. Click on the down arrow on the top right corner and scroll down to add your “Alt Text”!
Tip 2: Data is public now, so make sure you do not have anything sensitive. You are publishing your data to a lightweight webpage which is view-able by anyone who has the link.
Instructions
- Enter data in Google Sheets, make graph, etc.
- Under “File” click on “Publish Chart”
- Select the “Embed” tab
- Select Interactive or Image. For most cases, I choose image.
- Press publish. This makes the graph public.
- A small window opens with code containing the link to the public published content
- Copy the code
- Go back to your WordPress post or page
- Instead of displaying “Visual”, select the “Text” tab at the top right of the center column
- Click on the page or post where you want the graph to be and paste it there
Resizing can be down by changing the code or resizing in Google Sheets then running through the steps again.