How Churches Can Offer Online Sermons with WordPress

Do you need an easy way to share sermons with your church members online?

Recording and uploading sermons to your church website is a great way to reach members who can’t attend church. This can also help you to attract new church members as well.

In this article, we’ll teach you how you can record audio or video sermons, add them to your church website, and let your members subscribe, so they don’t miss a single update.

Bonus, if your church doesn’t have a website, then we will cover that too.

Ready? Let’s get started.

Why Record and Upload Sermons?

You’ve probably already created a website for your church. Most church websites include the basic information like location, service times, and a contact form.

But when it comes to putting sermons online, or even putting your whole church services online, you might think it takes too much time or would cost a lot of money.

There are a lot of reasons it makes sense to put your sermons online:

• Many new visitors to your church can listen online before they ever come through the doors.
• You may have church members who missed service because they were sick, or because they are elderly and unable to get out as much.
• Some members might miss part of the service to take care of a crying infant, and want to hear the rest.

Even for members who are present for the whole service, you may find that when you offer your sermons online, people are able to listen again and get even more out of the message.

Plus, adding sermons can even help you get more website traffic. That’s because websites that publish new content more often tend to rank higher in search results.

And the good news is that in terms of both dollars and volunteer hours, it doesn’t have to break the bank. Many small churches and church plants need to make a website as inexpensively as possible.

We’ll include instructions for how to record sermons on a tight budget, as well as give a few options for those who may have a higher production budget and are looking for more professional solutions.

Ready to learn how to record sermons and upload them to your site? We’ll walk you through each step.

Here’s a quick outline that you can use to easily browse the article:

• How to Create a Church Website
• Choosing the Right Church Recording Equipment
• How to Record Your Sermon
• Uploading Sermon Recording Online
• How to Live Stream Sermons Online

Step 1: Set Up Your Church Website

If you already have a WordPress website set up, then you can click here to skip to step 2 which is focused on choosing your recording equipment.

You can watch this video tutorial, or read our step-by-step guide on how to create a WordPress website to get started.

If you’re just getting started, we highly recommend using Bluehost to host your website.

They are offering WPBeginner readers a free domain name and 60% discount on web hosting. Basically, you can get started for $2.75 per month.

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You might also want to see our roundup of the best WordPress themes for churches, so you can customize your site design.

Once your website is set up, the next step is to make sure you have the equipment you need to record your sermons.

Step 2: Get the Right Recording Equipment

The equipment you need will depend on whether you want to record your live sermons while you’re preaching in the church, or record sermons separately by yourself.

The good news is, if you want to record live sermons, you may already have everything you need.

If your church already has a soundboard and an available laptop for recording sermons, you may just need to purchase a small cable like this 3.5mm to XLR Cable to run from your soundboard to a laptop.

Once connected, you can then use a program like Audacity to record the sermon (more on that in the next step).

If you don’t have a soundboard for your church, you could use a portable recorder like this Handheld Digital Audio Recorder. You can easily set this on your podium so you don’t have to hold it the whole time.

You might also want to record sermons privately by yourself, instead of recording the live sermon, or even record additional teaching for deeper study.

In that case, you’ll need a good microphone. You might think about using your laptop’s built-in mic to record sermons, but we don’t recommend that. Your church members will notice the bad sound quality and may have trouble understanding your sermon.

We recommend investing in one of these 3 mics that are popular for podcasting:

• Samson C01U (USB) – Entry level budget mic
• Rode Podcaster (USB) – Best USB mic that we found. We use it for our WPBeginner videos.
• Heil PR-40 (XLR connection, not USB) – Professional-quality mic

At WPBeginner, we also use the Rode Podcaster kit that came with a mic arm and shock mount.

You should also consider using a decent pair of headphones like Sony MDR7506 for recording and editing your audio files.

How do you record a sermon video?

For recording video sermons, you’ll need to use a video camera.

If you need to begin with an absolute minimal budget, you can record on your smartphone using a tripod. This is the cheapest way to go.

GripTight GorillaPod Stand PRO is a good tripod for any type of phone. It has adjustable legs that can be used to attach it to any surface.

For churches with a modest budget, you can use SlingStudio’s HD Video Production Unit to create a high-quality video recording that uses multiple cameras. SlingStudio lets you switch between video feeds in real-time from an iPad or laptop. You can add feeds from camcorders, DSLR cameras, or even use your smartphone.

Once you’ve chosen your equipment, you’re ready to start recording.

Step 3: Record Your Sermon

To record your sermons, we recommend using the program Audacity.

Audacity is a completely free program that, like WordPress, is licensed under the GPL. You can use it to record your sermons, and also edit the files for noise reduction and enhanced sound quality.

After you install Audacity, you’ll need to open the program and click the File menu to start a new project.

Then, click on the record button to start recording your sermon.

Don’t feel like you need to start over if you make a mistake. Just keep going, and then you can edit out the mistakes after you’re finished recording.

If you want, you can also import music files from File » Import to use at the beginning or end of your sermon.

Since Audacity is a powerful tool, you may want to check out these Audacity tutorials to learn more about all the features.

After you’re done recording your sermon, you can export it. We recommend the MP3 format because it creates smaller file sizes with good quality.

Once you’ve saved the file, you’re ready to upload it to your website.

Step 4: Upload Your Sermon Recording

Both audio and video recordings produce large files. You might be able to get away with hosting your audio files on your website for a short time, but you’re likely going to run into space issues after a while.

If you want to keep your WordPress website fast, you shouldn’t upload audio or video files to your own site.

We recommend you use a separate church sermon hosting service. If you’re looking for the best podcast host for churches, we recommend using Podbean to upload your sermon audio recordings. You can also check out our list of the best podcast hosting services for other options.

For video files, we recommend you get started on YouTube. It is easy to use, super-fast, and free. It is also the world’s second-largest search engine which means additional chances for your sermons to be viewed by someone new.

Once you’ve recorded your sermons and put them online, it’s time to add them to your website so your own members and visitors can easily find them.

You will begin by adding the Sermon Manager for WordPress plugin. For more details see our step-by-step guide on how to install a plugin.

You will begin by adding your first sermon. Simply go to Sermons » Add New page.

First, you will need to add the title of your sermon and the date it was preached on. You must add the date preached to be able to publish your sermon.

After those two fields, there are many fields that are optional but we encourage you to fill out as many as possible. Adding thoughtful descriptions helps your sermon be discoverable by search engines.

The second set of fields will allow you to paste the URL for your files, whether you’re adding audio, video, or both. There’s also a place where you can add sermon notes if you’d like to attach a PDF.

Fill out the meta on the right column for things like the preacher’s name, the sermon series, and then click publish. And that’s it! If you’re using pretty permalinks, your first sermon will now be available at:

https://ift.tt/2Xf5CLY

Submit your Podcast to Apple’s iTunes and Google Play

Another great feature in the Sermon Manager plugin is that you can easily submit your feed to podcasts. This makes it easier for your members to subscribe and receive notifications on their phones when you publish a new sermon.

To get started go to Sermons » Settings and click on the Podcast tab. The folks behind the Sermon Manager for WordPress plugin have made this section very self-explanatory so you will be able to follow along, filling in your own data and seeing what they recommend in light gray text.

Go through each field and fill in the information so it matches your church.

At the bottom, click the save button. Next, you’ll use the link for the feed validator so you can be sure you’ve filled out everything correctly. When your feed validates you’ll copy the link and submit your podcast to both Apple Podcasts and Google Play Podcasts.

How Do I Live Stream Sermons?

Plenty of churches are asking how do I live stream sermons, so you may be wanting to do that as well.

We recommend live streaming in addition to having sermons on your own website. If you only live stream and don’t record your sermons, then you’re missing out on all the benefits we listed above.

Having sermons on your website means your church members can access past sermons more easily. It can also help you to grow your website traffic.

That said, live streaming sermons can be a good way to reach new audiences on social media.

Two of the best ways are YouTube and Facebook. Facebook especially can be a good option because a lot of your members are already there and connected to your page.

But Facebook Live isn’t always reliable. We’ve heard reports of churches having issues with their livestream crashing in the middle of the service. Using a broadcasting service instead can offer a smoother experience.

Restream will allow you to broadcast your service on your own website, YouTube, your Facebook page, a Facebook group, and other services, all at the same time.

You can also record your sermons or services in advance and schedule them to go live at the right time for a less stressful experience.

If you’re live streaming your sermon using your smartphone, you’ll want to make sure you’re using a tripod for the best results.

After your live stream is over, you can add the video to your own site following our tutorial above.

We hope this article helped you learn how to record sermons. You may also want to check out our guide on how to accept online donations.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How Churches Can Offer Online Sermons with WordPress appeared first on WPBeginner.

April 07, 2020 at 07:48PM

How to Perform a WordPress Security Audit (Complete Checklist)

Do you want to perform a WordPress security audit to make sure that your website is secure?

WordPress out of the box is very secure. However, if you suspect that something is not right with your website, then you may want to perform a complete security audit to make sure that your website is secure.

In this article, we’ll show you how to easily perform a WordPress security audit without taking down your site.

What is a WordPress Security Audit?

WordPress security audit is the process of checking your website for signs of a security breach. You can perform a WordPress check to look for suspicious activity, malicious code, or an unusual drop in performance.

The basic WordPress security contains simple steps that you can perform manually.

For a more thorough audit, you can use a WordPress security audit tool to automatically perform the checks for you.

There are also online WordPress security audit services that you can use to evaluate your website’s security.

If you find something suspicious, then you can isolate, remove, and fix it.

When to Perform a WordPress Security Audit?

You should perform a WordPress security audit at least once a quarter. This allows you to stay on top of everything and close security loopholes even before they cause any trouble.

However if you see something suspicious, then you should perform a security audit immediately.

The following are some of the signs which indicate that you may need a security audit.

• Your website is suddenly too slow and sluggish
• You witness a drop in website traffic
• There are suspicious new accounts, forgot password requests, or login attempts on your website
• You see suscpious links appear on your website

That being said, let’s take a look at how to easily perform a WordPress security audit on your website.

WordPress Security Audit Checklist

The following are some of the steps you can take to perform a basic WordPress security audit on your website.

1. Software updates

WordPress updates are really important for the security and stability of your website. They patch security vulnerabilities, bring new features, and improve performance.

Make sure your WordPress core software, all plugins, and themes are up to date. You can easily do that by visiting Dashboard » Updates page inside WordPress admin area.

WordPress will look up if any updates are available and then list them for you to install. If you need more help, then see our guides on how to properly update WordPress and how to properly update WordPress plugins.

2. Check user accounts and passwords

Next, you need to review WordPress user accounts by visiting Users » All Users page. You’ll be looking for suspicious user accounts that shouldn’t be there.

If you run an online store, a membership site, or sell online courses, then you may have user accounts for your customers to sign in.

However, if you run a blog or a business website, then you should only see user accounts for yourself, or any other user that you have manually added.

If you see suspicious user accounts, then you need to delete them.

Now if your website doesn’t require users to create an account, then you need to visit Settings » General page and make sure that the box next to the ‘Anyone can register’ option is unchecked.

As an extra precaution, you need to change your WordPress admin password. We highly recommend adding two-factor authorization to strengthen password security on your website.

3. Run a WordPress security scan

The next step is to check your website for security vulnerabilities. Luckily, there are several online security scanners that you can use to check for malware.

We recommend using IsItWP Security Scanner which checks your website for malware and other security vulnerabilities.

These tools are good, but they can only scan the public-facing pages of your website. We’ll show you how to perform deeper audits later in this article.

4. Check your website analytics

Website analytics help you keep track of your website traffic. They are also a pretty good indicator of your website’s health.

If your website has been blacklisted by search engines, then you’ll see a sudden drop in your website traffic. If your website is slow or unresponsive, then your overall page views will also drop.

We recommend using MonsterInsights to track your website traffic. It not only shows your overall pageviews, but you can also use it to track registered users, your WooCommerce customers, form conversions and more.

5. Check or set up WordPress backups

If you haven’t already done so, then you need to immediately set up a WordPress backup plugin. This ensures that you always have a back up available in case anything goes wrong.

On the other hand, many beginners forget about their WordPress backup plugin after setting it up. Sometimes backup plugins may stop working without any notice. It is a good idea to make sure that your backup plugin is still working and saving backups.

Automatically Perform WordPress Security Audit

The above checklist allows you to go through the most important aspects of a security audit. However, it is not a very thorough process which means your website may still be vulnerable.

For instance, it is difficult to keep a manual record of all user activity, file differences, suspicious codes, and more. This is where you need a plugin to automate security auditing and keeping a record of everything.

You can automate this process with the help of a few WordPress security and monitoring plugins.

1. WordPress Security Audit Log

WordPress Security Audit Log is the best WordPress activity monitoring plugin on the market.

It allows you to keep track of all user activity on your website. You can view all user logins, IP addresses, and what they did on your website.

You can track WooCommerce users, editors, authors, and other members who have an account on your website.

You can also turn on events that you want to track and switch-off events that you don’t want to monitor.

The plugin also shows you a live view of all the users logged in to your website. If you see a suspicious account, then you can end their session right away and lock them out.

For more details, see our guide on how to monitor user activity in WordPress using WP Security Audit log.

2. Sucuri

Sucuri is the best WordPress firewall plugin on the market, and it is also the best all-in-one WordPress security solution that you can get for your website.

It provides real-time protection against DDoS attacks by blocking suspicious activity even before it reaches your website. This removes load from your server and improves your website speed / performance.

It comes with a built-in security plugin that checks your WordPress files for suspicious code. You also get a detailed look at the user activity across your website.

Most importantly, Sucuri offers malware removal for free with all their paid plans. This means, that even if your website is already affected, their security experts will clean it for you.

We hope this article helped you learn how to perform a WordPress security audit on your website. You may also want to see our complete WordPress security guide for step by step instructions on how to protect your website.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Perform a WordPress Security Audit (Complete Checklist) appeared first on WPBeginner.

April 06, 2020 at 04:00PM

How to Set Up Online Food Ordering for Restaurants in WordPress

Do you want to set up online food ordering for your restaurant? Whether it’s a brand new venture, or you’ve been serving customers in person for years, offering food delivery can help boost your profits.

Setting up an online food ordering service may sound too technical. The good news is that it is quite easy to set up.

In this guide, we will share how to setup online food ordering for restaurants using WordPress, step by step.

What You Need to Set up Online Food Ordering

You will need a website to set up online food ordering for your restaurant.

If you don’t have a website yet, don’t worry. You can easily start a website using WordPress, which is the best website builder in the world used by millions of small businesses.

Creating a website isn’t going to eat too much into your profit margin, either. Bluehost, one of WordPress’s recommended hosting providers, is offering our readers a great deal.

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Transparency Disclaimer: WPBeginner content is reader-supported, which means if you click on some of the links in this post, we may earn a small referral fee. Please know that we only recommend products that we use ourselves and/or believe will add value to our readers. See how WPBeginner is funded for more details.

There are loads of great WordPress themes for restaurants available. A theme is like a template for your website. Choosing a good one will help your site look professional and reputable, encouraging customers to order from you.

If you need some help setting up your website, take a look at our comprehensive step by step guide on how to start a website.

Adding Online Food Ordering to Your Website

Once you’ve got your WordPress website set up, you can easily add an online form so that customers can order food.

Now there are multiple ways to do this with WordPress.

However, the easiest way to do this is by using WPForms. It is the best WordPress form builder and allows you to easily create online forms on your website (no coding required).

First, you’ll need to install and activate the WPForms plugin. If you’re not sure how to do that, check out our full instructions on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, you need to visit WPForms » Settings page to enter your license key. You can find this information under your account on WPForms website.

You’ll then want to install the ‘Form Templates Pack’ addon to make it as easy as possible to create your form. Note that you’ll need the ‘Pro’ level of WPForms to use this template.

To install the addon, go to WPForms » Addons. Scroll down to find the ‘Form Templates Pack Addon’ then click ‘Install Addon’ beneath it.

Next, go to WPForms » Add New page in your WordPress dashboard to create your online food ordering form.

Type in a name for your form. You can call it whatever makes sense to you. Customers won’t see this title unless you want them to.

Next, scroll down the screen to the section titled ‘Additional Templates’ and select the ‘Takeout Order Form’. There are quite a lot of templates, so you might want to search for it.

Click on the template and your form will be automatically created for you.

As you can see, this form is designed for pizza takeout. You can change it in any way you want, though. Simply click on a field (a part of the form) to edit it.

We’re going to edit the ‘What type of pizza would you like?’ field at the top of the form.

You can change the label for the field. This is the question or prompt for the customer to answer. You can also change the choices and remove or add them using the (+) and (-) buttons.

You can also add more fields to your form. For instance, you’ll likely want to add a field so customers can specify what time they want their delivery.

To add a field, click on the ‘Add Fields’ tab on the left-hand side of your screen. Scroll down to the ‘Fancy Fields’ section and find the ‘Date / Time’ field.

Drag and drop this field to wherever you want it on your form.

As before, you can click on the field to edit it. You’ll likely want to change the label. If you only accept same-day delivery orders, you’ll want to change the ‘Format’ to ‘Time’ only, too.

In the ‘Advanced’ options for the field, you can choose to change the different intervals offered. The options are 15 minutes, 30 minutes, or 1 hour.

It’s a good idea to make the ‘Address’ field for your form mandatory. By setting a field as ‘Required’, you prevent the customer from submitting the form until they complete it.

Just click on the ‘Address’ field to edit it, then check the ‘Required’ box on the left hand side of the screen.

When you’ve finished creating your form, click ‘Save’ at the top of the screen before moving on to the next step.

Setting Up Notifications for Your Food Ordering Form

You’ll need to make sure that orders are coming through to the right people. WPForms automatically sends out an email to the administrator for your website, but that might not be where you want orders to go.

Click on the ‘Settings’ tab on the left-hand side of your screen. Click ‘Notifications’ and you’ll see the default notification on the right.

You may want to change the ‘Send to Email Address’ so that it’s different from your website administrator’s email. You can simply delete {admin_email} and enter one or more email addresses here. Make sure you separate multiple email addresses with a comma.

You may also want to change the subject line so that your orders don’t all have the exact same subject. You can easily include the customer’s name in the subject line using Smart Tags.

Just click on ‘Smart Tags’ and scroll down to ‘Name’. Click on that and WPForms will insert the correct code for it into your subject line. In this case, that’s {field_id="3"}.

Once you’re happy with the notification, click ‘Save’ at the top of the screen.

Tip: WPForms saves form entries in the WordPress database, so don’t worry if you accidentally delete an order from your email inbox. To see all orders, go to WPForms » Entries in your dashboard. Click on the name of your form to view the orders.

You’ll likely also want to set up an email notification for your customers. You can do this by clicking the ‘Add New Notification’ button.

You’ll be prompted to enter a name for the notification. You can use whatever makes sense to you here. The customer won’t see it.

To send the email to the customer, delete {admin_email} from the ‘Send To Email Address’ box and use ‘Show Smart Tags’ to select the ‘Email’ field.

Next, you’ll want to change the email subject line and your details. Simply type in whatever you want to use here.

You may also want to edit the email that the customer receives. By default, all it will show is the information they entered. You could add a message like this:

Once you’re happy with the customer notification, click ‘Save’ at the top of the screen.

Tip: To get back to the first notification you were editing, just scroll down.

Editing the Confirmation Message Your Customer Sees

When your customer completes the form, WPForms will show them a message to confirm that the form was submitted successfully.

You can edit this message by going to Settings » Confirmations. Just type whatever message you want into the box. You can even use the visual editor to format this message.

You can also choose to change the ‘Confirmation Type’ and send the customer to a thank you page, if you want.

Taking Payment Through Your Food Ordering Form

The standard takeout form isn’t set up for payments. That’s fine if you only accept cash on delivery. However, in some situations you might prefer to take online payment upfront from the customer.

If you want to take payments, you’ll need to set up your form with special fields that can calculate how much the customer owes. You’ll also need to integrate your form with a payment processor such as PayPal.

First, go to the ‘Fields’ tab to change your form itself. Click ‘Add Fields’ and scroll down to the ‘Payment Fields’ section. Replace any of your fields that list prices with one of the ‘Item’ fields.

On our form, we’ve removed the original ‘How many people is the meal deal for?’ field that we were using. We’ve replaced it with the ‘Multiple Items’ payment field.

When you’re using payment fields on your form, you need to make sure you include a ‘Total’ field too. This is so your form can show the customer the total they’ll pay.

Again, simply drag and drop the ‘Total’ field from ‘Payment Fields’ to wherever you want it on your form.

Make sure you save your form after making changes.

Next, you’ll need to choose a payment processor to use with your form. WPForms integrates seamlessly with PayPal and Stripe. To add either of these, go to WPForms » Addons in your WordPress dashboard.

We’re going to use the ‘PayPal Standard Addon’ for our form. Find it and click the ‘Install Addon’ button.

Now, go back to your food ordering form, under WPForms » All Forms.

Click on the ‘Payments’ tab of your form and select the payment integration you want to use.

Make sure you check the box ‘Enable PayPal Standard payments’ to activate this feature for your form.

Next, you’ll need to enter the PayPal email address that you’re using for your restaurant. Leave ‘Mode’ set to ‘Production and ‘Payment Type’ set to ‘Products and Services’.

You can change ‘Shipping’ to ‘Don’t ask for an address’ if you want, as the customer will have already filled in their address on the order form.

Click ‘Save’ at the top of the screen.

Your form will now automatically redirect customers to PayPal after they submit their order.

Adding the Online Food Ordering Form to Your Site

Finally, you need to add the form you’ve created to your website.

First, you’ll need to choose an existing page or create a new page for the form to go on. To create a page, go to Pages » Add New in your WordPress dashboard.

Give your page a title. Click on the (+) sign to create a new block. Select the ‘WPForms’ block from the ‘Widgets’ section or type ‘WPForms’ into the search bar.

Next, you’ll need to select your form from the dropdown list.

It’ll then be automatically added to your page. Simply publish (or update) your page to put the form live on your website.

We recommend testing out your form to make sure it’s working as expected. Check that you receive the email notification. If not, follow our instructions to fix the WordPress not sending email issue.

We hope this article helped you learn how to set up online food ordering for restaurants. You might also be interested in our article on how to create a business email, and how to get a virtual business phone number for your website.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.

The post How to Set Up Online Food Ordering for Restaurants in WordPress appeared first on WPBeginner.

April 04, 2020 at 07:43PM

7 Best Data Visualization WordPress Plugins (Charts & Infographics)

Do you want to show colorful charts, graphs, pictograms, or infographics on your website? Data visualization makes it easier for users to understand the data that you’re sharing.

Depending on your goals, there are a number of WordPress plugins and tools that you can use to create graphs, charts, and infographics.

In this article, we’ll share some of the best data visualization WordPress plugins and tools.

Understanding Data Visualization

Data visualization simply means turning numbers into graphics like charts, tables, interactive graphs, and infographics.

Creating a visual representation of data can make it much easier to spot trends and patterns. This helps you to figure out what your data is telling you.

For instance, when you look at Google Analytics to see how your website is doing, you’ll likely be looking at a line graph. This might show an upward trend in traffic over the past six months.

You could use data visualization to enhance your blog posts, to let visitors interact with your site, or even to create an email optin like a special report. All of this can help you build your audience and make money from your website.

Some of the tools we’re going to cover can also be used to create dynamic charts and tables that change based on the user’s input.

Let’s take a look at some of the best WordPress data visualization plugins:

1. WPForms: Survey and Polls Addon

WPForms is a premium WordPress plugin. It’s a fantastic way to run surveys or polls on your blog. It makes it easy for you to see the results in a visual way, too.

To run a survey using WPForms, you’ll need to sign up for the Pro account or higher through the WPForms site. Once you’ve done that, you can download and install the plugin on your site.

To create a survey, you’ll need to install the Survey and Polls addon. Go to WPForms » Addons in your WordPress dashboard to install and activate it.

A great advantage of using WPForms to create surveys is that your existing forms can easily be turned into surveys. This could save a lot of time if you already have a form that you’re using to gather data.

You can follow our instructions on how to create a survey in WordPress to make a survey using WPForms.

With this plugin, you can switch between different ways of visualizing your data. You’re not limited to just one type of graph or chart.

You can also download your graphs and charts in various formats, such as JPG and PDF. This makes it easy to use your results in blog posts as well as with colleagues, your boss, or clients.

Best for: Running surveys to get data from your website’s visitors. WPForms’ built-in tools will then turn this data into powerful visualizations like charts and graphs.

2. Formidable Forms

Formidable Forms is a highly advanced forms plugin for WordPress that lets you create complex forms.

You can use it to create a whole range of different forms, including column graphs, horizontal bar graphs, line graphs, pie charts, area graphs, scatter graphs, histograms, stepped area graphs, and geographic heat maps.

You can display the charts anywhere on your site using a shortcode. This makes it really easy to put them into your site’s pages or posts.

As with WPForms, you’ll need to use the plugin to gather data before you can create a graph. You can turn any form data into any type of graph, simply by setting the appropriate type in the shortcode.

You can style your graphs using different shortcode parameters. For instance, you can select the colors by adding hex codes to the shortcode. You can also filter graph data so that it’s specific to different users.

Don’t worry if you’re not very confident using shortcodes, though. Formidable Forms comes with a shortcode builder that lets you pick from a few dropdown lists to create your shortcode.

Best for: Anyone wanting to create a complex form or display a wide variety of data in different ways such as calculators, data-driven apps, user listing tables, directories, and more.

3. Visualizer

Visualizer is a table and charts plugin for WordPress that lets you create interactive data visualizations for your site.

The free version comes with 9 types of chart, including line charts, area charts, bar charts, column charts, pie charts, geo charts, table charts, bubble charts, and scatter charts.

You can add these charts without installing any extra plugins, too.

If you opt for the pro version, you get an extra 6 chart types and email support. There’s a full 30-day money-back guarantee if you decide you don’t like it.

You can also use Visualizer to create interactive tables for your site, such as a pricing table. Long tables can easily be paginated, and users can search and sort your tables.

Best for: Creating graphs and charts for free. If you’re just getting started with data visualization, the free version of Visualizer could be a great place to begin.

4. wpDataTables

The wpDataTables plugin might sound a bit complicated from its name, but it’s actually just as easy to use as Excel.

It lets you add data and easily create charts and graphs that look great on both websites and mobile devices.

You can provide your data by uploading a file or simply by typing it in. You can even create tables that your user can edit. This will change the charts for them in real time.

You can create filters for your data so that it’s easy to show only results that are from particular dates, locations, and so on.

There’s lots of documentation and a “wizard” that takes you step by step through the process of creating a table of data.

There’s a lite version of the plugin available if you don’t want to pay for the premium version. Note that this has some limitations. For instance, your users can’t edit tables if you’re using the lite version.

Best for: Complex data, or tables and graphs where you want your users to be able to input values.

5. Snowball

Snowball isn’t just a data visualization plugin. It’s a block post/page creation plugin that’s designed for journalists to create immersive articles.

One key feature of Snowball is the ability to make charts and graphs. You can use it to create bar charts and scatterplots as well as tables of data and maps.

You can use the graphical interface to make some changes to how your blocks of content look. If you want, you can go further and edit the CSS and HTML code.

Snowball is completely free and it’s maintained by the openHTML research team at Drexel University.

It should work with your existing theme. However, Snowball’s creators recommend enabling its built-in single column theme for your Snowball articles.

Best for: Including data visualization in long-form content, particularly if you want to also include maps or videos.

6. Easy Charts

Easy Charts is a free plugin that you can use to create a whole range of different charts. These include several types of bar chart and area chart, plus line charts, pie charts, donut charts, polar area charts, and waterfall charts.

Once you’ve put in your data, you can use it to create any type of chart. It’s easy to switch between the different charts and to preview how they’re going to look on your site.

Because it’s a free plugin, it doesn’t offer some of the advanced functionality you get with other plugins. For instance, you can’t create responsive tables of data that users can edit.

Best for: Creating a range of straightforward, free charts or graphs to display data on your website.

7. Data Tables Generator

The Data Tables Generator plugin, from WordPress plugin creator Supsystic, lets you create responsive tables.

You’ll need the Pro version in order to create charts and graphs. These are provided through Google Chart’s technology. You can create all the standard types of chart that you’d expect, like bar charts, pie charts, donut charts, and more.

You can also use data that you’ve got in a spreadsheet elsewhere. The plugin supports importing from CSV, Excel, PDF, and Google Sheets.

One particularly handy feature is that Data Table Generator integrates with WooCommerce. You can use it to create product tables that users can easily search.

Best for: Creating tables of products in your WooCommerce store. These can be filtered and sorted by the user.

Bonus: Canva Infographics Maker Pro

Canva is a powerful design tool that lets you make beautiful infographics, blog visuals, and other graphics with a completely drag & drop interface. Although it’s not a WordPress plugin, it’s a tool that many bloggers use to create compelling visual content.

They also have pre-made templates for social media graphics for all platforms, posters, banners, flyers, powerpoint presentations, and so much more.

It’s basically a top web design software for non-designers because how easy it is to create something beautiful.

We hope this article helped you learn more about the best data visualization WordPress plugins. You may also want to check out our list of the must have WordPress plugins for all websites, and our comparison of the best WordPress page builder plugins.

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The post 7 Best Data Visualization WordPress Plugins (Charts & Infographics) appeared first on WPBeginner.

April 03, 2020 at 06:04PM