The web is all about presenting data, and a picture paints a thousand words - so what's better than a graph to quickly and easily present figures and trend to yor web site visitor?

There's a great deal of software available to produce static diagrams and graphs as image files - .gif or .jpg are the most common formats - and there's a lot of professional / marketing sites which that use them. But what if you want your diagrams to change as the data held on your server changes?

In PHP, the Gd package allows you to generate images on the fly - and it works very well. But those are images ("graphics") based on the pixel addressing of the image and you've still got a lot of conversion, clipping and presentation to do if you want a graph of (say) ticket sales from 2000 to 2007 along the X axis, with a vertical scale from 0 to 50,000 on Y ... when the image is 600 x 450.

That's where additional graphic packages such as Phplot come in to play ... you can specify just the data sets, a few key parameters, and the titles and the work is done for you.

There's a PHPlot example on our website, and you'll find links from that page to the PHPlot download.
(written 2007-03-09 19:27:12)

 G902 - Well House Consultants - Web site techniques, utility and visibility
  [2668] Is it worth it? - (2010-03-09)
  [2569] How to run a successful online poll / petition / survey / consultation - (2010-01-10)
  [2552] Web site traffic - real users, or just noise? - (2009-12-26)
  [2532] Analysing Google arrivals by country of origin - (2009-12-10)
  [2519] Status Page / breaks of service in early December - (2009-11-30)
  [2410] Removal of technical resources from this site - (2009-09-19)
  [2389] Writing with our customers words - (2009-09-01)
  [2341] Koulutus, Open Source tietokone kielillä - (2009-08-09)
  [2340] ldning, Open Source dator språk - (2009-08-09)
  [2339] Opplæring, Open Source datamaskinen språk - (2009-08-09)
  [2338] Uddannelse, Open Source computer sprog - (2009-08-09)
  [2337] Opleiding, Open Source computertalen - (2009-08-09)
  [2336] Formação, Open Source computador línguas - (2009-08-09)
  [2335] Ausbildung, die Open-Source-Sprachen - (2009-08-09)
  [2334] Formazione, Open Source computer lingue - (2009-08-09)
  [2333] Formación, de los lenguajes de código abierto - (2009-08-09)
  [2332] Formation, des langages Open Source - (2009-08-09)
  [2225] How important is a front page ranking on a search engine? - (2009-06-09)
  [2065] Static mirroring through HTTrack, wget and others - (2009-03-03)
  [2056] Web Site Loading - experiences and some solutions shared - (2009-02-26)
  [1982] Cooking bodies and URLs - (2009-01-08)
  [1970] Plagarism - who is copying my pages? - (2009-01-02)
  [1961] Making our things easier to find - (2008-12-26)
  [1955] How to avoid duplicating web page maintainance - (2008-12-20)
  [1888] Find the link - (2008-11-16)
  [1856] A few of my favourite things - (2008-10-26)
  [1833] Web Bloopers - good form design - avoiding pitfalls - (2008-10-11)
  [1797] I have been working hard but I do not expect you noticed - (2008-09-14)
  [1793] Which country does a search engine think you are located in? - (2008-09-11)
  [1756] Ever had One of THOSE mornings? - (2008-08-16)
  [1747] Who is watching you? - (2008-08-10)
  [1711] Rapid growth leads to server move - (2008-07-17)
  [1653] How do Google Ads work? - (2008-05-25)
  [1634] Kiss and Book - (2008-05-07)
  [1630] To provide external links, or not? - (2008-05-04)
  [1610] PHP course dot co, dot uk - (2008-04-13)
  [1554] Online hotel reservations - Melksham, Wiltshire (near Bath) - (2008-02-24)
  [1541] Colour, Composition or Content - (2008-02-16)
  [1534] Where in the world / country is my visitor from? - (2008-02-07)
  [1513] Perl, PHP or Python? No - Perl AND PHP AND Python! - (2008-01-20)
  [1506] Ongoing Image Copyright Issues, PHP and MySQL solutions - (2008-01-14)
  [1505] Script to present commonly used images - PHP - (2008-01-13)
  [1494] A time to update pictures - (2008-01-03)
  [1437] Above the fold with First Great Western - (2007-11-19)
  [1297] Stuffing content into a web page - easy maintainance - (2007-08-09)
  [1237] What proportion of our web traffic is robots? - (2007-06-19)
  [1212] What brought YOU to our web site? - (2007-06-01)
  [1207] Simple but effective use of mod_rewrite (Apache httpd) - (2007-05-27)
  [1198] From Web to Web 2 - (2007-05-21)
  [1186] Two new pages / sites - (2007-05-14)
  [1184] Finding resources - some pointers - (2007-05-13)
  [1177] Sorting out for a site map - (2007-05-05)
  [1055] Above the fold - (2007-01-28)
  [1029] Our search engine placement is dropping. - (2007-01-11)
  [1015] Search engine placement - long term strategy and success - (2006-12-30)
  [994] Training on Cascading Style Sheets - (2006-12-17)
  [976] Santa at the station - (2006-12-09)
  [916] Driving customers away - (2006-11-07)
  [893] Visibility - (2006-10-14)
  [800] Effective web campaign? - (2006-07-12)
  [767] Finding the language preference of a web site visitor - (2006-06-18)
  [757] Horse and Python training - (2006-06-12)
  [732] Where is a web site visitor browsing from - (2006-05-24)
  [718] Protecting images from theft - (2006-05-12)
  [681] Mirroring a dynamic site - (2006-04-12)
  [658] Keeping the visitors happy and browsing - (2006-03-26)
  [649] Denial of Service ''attack'' - (2006-03-17)
  [533] Bigger Box Campaign - (2005-12-18)
  [528] Getting favicon to work - avoiding common pitfalls - (2005-12-14)
  [510] Dynamic Web presence - next generation web site - (2005-11-29)
  [492] New Navigation Aid - Launch of My Wellho - (2005-11-11)
  [414] Form Madness - (2005-08-14)
  [376] What brings people to my web site? - (2005-07-13)
  [369] CMS - the minefield of Choices - (2005-07-05)
  [348] Graveyard pages - (2005-06-15)
  [347] Frightening and from-friend viruses and spams - (2005-06-14)
  [322] More maps - (2005-05-23)
  [320] Ordnance Survey - using a 'Get a map' - (2005-05-22)
  [314] What language is this written in? - (2005-05-17)
  [311] Growth pains - (2005-05-14)
  [288] Colour blindness for web developers - (2005-04-22)
  [284] The Iconish language - (2005-04-19)
  [278] Cover all the options - (2005-04-13)
  [276] An apology to Mr Boneparte - (2005-04-11)
  [274] Our most popular resources - (2005-04-10)
  [268] Information request forms, cleaning up spam - (2005-04-05)
  [261] Putting a form online - (2005-03-29)
  [259] Responding to spam - (2005-03-27)
  [222] Who are all these visitors? - (2005-02-20)
  [202] Searching for numbers - (2005-02-04)
  [197] Allow for peak traffic on your web site - (2005-02-01)
  [182] Your personal Google ranking - (2005-01-19)
  [179] The hunt for unique words - (2005-01-16)
  [173] Data Mining - (2005-01-09)
  [165] Implementing an effective site search engine - (2005-01-01)
  [142] Colour for access - (2004-12-06)
  [117] A case of case - (2004-11-14)
  [109] URLs - a service and not a hurdle - (2004-11-04)
  [98] No more 'Error 404' pages. Something better. - (2004-10-24)
  [32] Web design platoon - (2004-08-29)
  [23] Skills and responsibilities - (2004-08-22)

H309 - PHP - Maps, Graphics and Geographics
  [2675] Redirecting to your main domain for correct security keys - (2010-03-13)
  [2583] Reducing image size on digital photos - PHP - (2010-01-17)
  [2390] Dynamic / changing images on your web page - (2009-09-01)
  [2361] Geocoding - converting address to latitude / Longitude with PHP via Google - (2009-08-14)
  [2343] World Flags in your PHP pages - (2009-08-10)
  [1956] Images for Christmas - (2008-12-21)
  [1923] Making it all worthwhile - (2008-12-04)
  [1752] Dynamic maps / geographics in PHP - (2008-08-13)
  [1734] All around the world? - (2008-08-03)
  [1724] addslashes v mysql_real_escape_string in PHP - (2008-07-27)
  [1628] Gant charts - drawing them with a PHP script - (2008-05-03)
  [1391] Ordnance Survey Grid Reference to Latitude / Longitude - (2007-10-14)
  [1390] Converting from postal address to latitude / longitude - (2007-10-13)
  [1389] Controlling and labelling Google maps via PHP - (2007-10-13)
  [1194] Drawing hands on a clock face - PHP - (2007-05-19)
  [937] Display an image from a MySQL database in a web page via PHP - (2006-11-22)
  [665] PHP Image viewing application - (2006-04-01)
  [563] Merging pictures using PHP and GD - (2006-01-13)

H999 - Additional PHP Material
  [2215] If nothing, make it nothing. - (2009-06-02)
  [2073] Extra PHP Examples - (2009-03-09)
  [1623] PHP Techniques - a workshop - (2008-04-26)
  [1519] Flipping images on your web page - (2008-01-26)
  [1485] Copyright and theft of images, bandwidth and members. - (2007-12-26)
  [1451] More PHP sample and demonstration programs - (2007-12-01)
  [1270] PHP Standalone - keyboard to screen - (2007-07-18)
  [1053] Sorting people by name in PHP - (2007-01-26)
  [1020] Parallel processing in PHP - (2007-01-03)
  [1010] Dates, times, clickable diarys in PHP - (2006-12-28)
  [917] Syntax checking in PHP - (2006-11-07)
  [839] Reporting on the 10 largest files or 10 top scores - (2006-08-20)
  [822] PHP - a team member leaves - (2006-08-04)
  [806] Check your user is human. Have him retype a word in a graphic - (2006-07-17)
  [789] Hot answers in PHP - (2006-07-02)
  [687] Presentation, Business and Persistence layers in Perl and PHP - (2006-04-17)
  [603] PHP - setting sort order with an associative array - (2006-02-13)
  [493] Running a Perl script within a PHP page - (2005-11-12)
  [483] Double Dollars in PHP - (2005-11-02)
  [468] Stand alone PHP programs - (2005-10-18)
  [372] Time calculation in PHP - (2005-07-08)
  [337] the array returned by preg_match_all - (2005-06-06)
  [239] What and why for the epoch - (2005-03-08)
  [54] PHP and natural sorting - (2004-09-19)

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