Luke Carbis and Rob Stinson, two of the three-person Block Lab team that WP Engine picked up in 2020, are back together on a new project. This time, they are joined by Byron Keet. The trio is taking on the WordPress charts space via a suite of blocks named Hello Charts.
“Some folks launch deals on Black Friday,” wrote the team last week in only its second tweet since July. “We’re launching an entire product!”
Carbis pointed out that the team strived to create a block-editor native plugin. There are no admin screens or settings pages, and the user just works from the editor.
The marketing material on the website homepage claims that Hello Charts is “the first charts plugin built block editor first.” However, SB Charts has been around for nearly a year, and Chart Block landed in the WordPress plugin directory several weeks ago. Charts Blocks for Gutenberg, which supports CSV imports, got its initial release half a year ago but has not been updated since.
The claim of being first is, perhaps, a slipup in marketing. The only reason I spotted it immediately is that I have been keeping a close eye on similar plugins for a while, hoping to find a decent charts solution for the block editor. While Hello Charts may not technically be the first to land, it offers the best user experience yet.
For most cases, I rely on bar and line charts. However, the plugin offers five block types in total:
Bar ChartLine ChartPie ChartPolar Area ChartRadar Chart
Each works almost the same when entering data and customizing the output. There are a few options and controls that are specific to each type. Plus, users can transform from one chart block to another and back again at the click of a button without