Hello Ben,
Thank you for reaching out to us.
With the Lite version (which is hosted here) you can only create tables linked to existing sources (Excel, Google Spreadsheets, CSV, etc) but those tables load the data in its entirety, output the entire table to the front-end all at once, and then split it into pages using JavaScript; all processing is done on the client’s computer by JavaScript. This works fine for relatively small tables, but if the table gets bigger the page also gets larger. Consequently, page generation and load time will also increase and everything will take more time. For larger data sets (more than 2.000 – 3.000 rows, and in some cases more than 500 rows), these wpDataTables will work slower, and for really large data sets (10.000 rows and more) the page can crash completely.
If the table is supposed to have more than 2.000 – 3.000 rows, you’d need to use the full version of the plugin and fetch the data using server-side processing which will fetch only the rows currently displayed on the page, making the page load faster.
You would be able to fetch a single sheet from Google Spreadsheets, since every sheet has its own URL, but depending on the data size, you may want to think about different options for creating tables with wpDataTables.
Graphs can be added to the table, either as images by using the
tag, or by enabling “Parse shortcodes in strings” and adding the shortcode of an existing wpDataChart to the Google Spreadsheet you’re using.
Kind regards.