Bar charts are a very common type of chart used primarily to visually compare variables.

A WordPress administrator that needs bar charts in its post has both the option to install a chart plugin or upload images generated with external programs.

Create bar charts with a WordPress plugin

Using a chart plugin gives you many advantages:

  • The charts created with a plugin can be interactive and thus have animations, active tooltips, and more
  • You can at any time modify the chart if changes are required
  • Charts generated with the HTML Canvas or with dynamic SVG are lighter than charts uploaded as raster images
  • You have a unique and centralized menu to handle all the charts of the website

This tutorial will use UberChart, a premium WordPress plugin based on the Chart.js JavaScript library, to create all the bar charts.

The UberChart plugin can easily generate all the variations of a bar chart:

Bar chart

This section covers the simplest type of bar chart.

Vertical bar chart

To create a vertical bar chart, proceed as follows:

  • Visit the Charts menu
  • Load the “Bar chart with a single dataset” model
  • Set your data points in the data spreadsheet editor
  • Save the chart
A generic vertical bar chart with a category scale in the x axis, a linear scale in the y axis and dummy data.

Horizontal Bar Chart

To create a horizontal bar chart, proceed as follows:

  • Visit the Charts menu
  • Load the “Horizontal bar chart with a single dataset” model
  • Set your data points in the data spreadsheet editor
  • Save the chart
A generic horizontal bar chart

Grouped Bar Chart

When each category of the bar chart can be split into multiple subcategories, or when the primary category represents a time interval, grouped bar charts can be used.

Vertical Grouped Bar Chart

To create a vertical grouped bar chart, proceed as follows:

  • Visit the Charts menu
  • Load the “Bar chart with a single dataset” model
  • Increase the number of datasets to more than one with the Rows field
  • Set your data points in the data spreadsheet editor
  • Save the chart
A vertical grouped bar charts with categories and subcategories

Horizontal Grouped Bar Chart

To create a horizontal grouped bar chart, proceed as follows:

  • Visit the Charts menu
  • Load the “Horizontal bar chart with multiple datasets” model
  • Set your data points in the data spreadsheet editor
  • Save the chart
A horizontal grouped bar chart with categories and subcategories

Stacked Bar Chart

A stacked bar chart is recommended when each category of a bar chart can be divided into multiple parts that form a total.

Vertical Stacked Bar Chart

Use this procedure to create a vertical stacked bar chart:

  • Visit the Charts menu
  • Load the “Bar chart with multiple stacked datasets” model
  • Set your data points in the data spreadsheet editor
  • Save the chart
A vertical stacked bar chart with categories and subcategories

Horizontal Stacked Bar Chart

Use this procedure to create a horizontal stacked bar chart:

  • Visit the Charts menu
  • Load the “Horizontal bar chart with multiple stacked datasets” model
  • Set your data points in the data spreadsheet editor
  • Save the chart
A horizontal l stacked bar chart with categories and subcategories

Histogram

Histograms are used to represent the distribution of the same variable visually. In a histogram, the categories are numerical ranges, and the space used to separate the bars of a bar chart is not present.

Vertical Histogram

Create a vertical histogram with this procedure:

  • Visit the Charts menu
  • Load the “Bar chart with a single dataset” model
  • Set the categories with numerical ranges in the spreadsheet editor
  • Set your data points in the data spreadsheet editor
  • Set the X Scale Options -> Category Percentage and the X Scale Options -> Bar Percentage option to “1”
  • Set the Border Width and the Hover Border Width of the dataset to “0”
  • Save the chart
A vertical histogram with numerical ranges

Horizontal histogram

Create a horizontal histogram with this procedure:

  • Visit the Charts menu
  • Load the “Horizontal bar chart with a single dataset” model
  • Set the categories with numerical ranges in the spreadsheet editor
  • Set your data points in the data spreadsheet editor
  • Set the Y Scale Options -> Category Percentage and the Y Scale Options -> Bar Percentage option to “1”
  • Set the Border Width and the Hover Border Width of the dataset to “0”
  • Save the chart
A horizontal histogram with numerical ranges

Create bar charts without a WordPress plugin

If your idea is to display bar charts in your WordPress posts without using a chart plugin, this is a straightforward method:

  1. Generate the images of your bar charts with a spreadsheet editor or with a specialized program
  2. Copy the chart object (or take a screenshot if you can’t copy the chart object to the clipboard)
  3. Paste the clipboard to a raster graphics editor like Photoshop or GIMP and do your editing if needed
  4. Save the image in your local storage in a raster format suitable for the web (I recommend the .png file format)
  5. Add the Image block in the post and upload your image