How to Add Dummy Content for Theme Development in WordPress
Whether you are developing a new WordPress theme or plugin, making changes to an existing website, or exploring some WordPress functionalities in a local environment, you will need a considerable amount of dummy content to properly test how different elements interact and behave on the website.
But, even the process of creating this dummy content can be infuriating, as it can be challenging for less experienced WordPress users while being too tedious for more advanced ones. That is why we have decided to explain how you can dummy content in WordPress easily, which you can then use for all the development purposes. Here’s what we’ll be covering:
Generally speaking, you can alleviate the dummy content issue to some degree by importing demo data some WordPress themes might offer or by importing a previously created .xml file, whether created for this purpose or exported from one of your other websites. Still, in general, the need for adding dummy content to a WordPress website in a clear manner and without any technical requirements remains.
The quickest way of doing so involves using WordPress plugins for generating dummy content according to however you configure it. Unfortunately, depending on the plugin you use, you might be able to generate only certain types of dummy content. For this reason, we have thoroughly investigated the WordPress.org plugin repository in search of plugins which have as few limitations as possible when it comes to content generation. With that in mind, we have found two suitable WordPress plugins to showcase in this article, called FakerPress and DemoPress. Let us proceed.
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The FakerPress plugin is one of the more well-known plugins for generating dummy website content intended for theme development. It can create posts, pages, and custom post type items, comments, users, items belonging to default and custom taxonomies, as well as corresponding metadata.
It can also generate random HTML, images, real browser data as part of user comments, and additional meta rules you can apply to the twenty types of data this plugin uses. Furthermore, the plugin has an easy way of deleting all the generated content after you are done testing it. Therefore, it is an ideal plugin for both WordPress developers and regular WordPress users. We will explain its operation below.
After installing and activating the plugin, navigate to the FakerPress section, where you will see all the options provided by the plugin. These are separated into five subsections: Settings, Posts, Comments, Terms, and Users. More precisely, the plugin offers a way to erase any previously created dummy data and separate generators for posts, comments, taxonomy terms, and users. The plugin data eraser is located in the FakerPress > Settings section and can be activated by simply typing Let it go! in the input field and pressing the Delete! button. Of course, this process is irreversible. Thus, making a backup of your website beforehand is suggested, just in case you have a change of hearts.
Having said that, let us continue. We will cover the content generator in more detail below. We will do so in an order appropriate for actual content creation: users, taxonomy terms, post content, and comments.
The Users generator allows you to select the quantity of newly generated users, an array of roles that they could have, the number of paragraphs their description will have, whether it will use HTML code and which of the HTML tags it will use: h3, h4, h5, h6 or the p tag.
As for the options, most input fields will have automatic suggestions on, displaying the list of available options once they are active or once you start to type. Also, the quantity inputs can be used in two modes – either only the first to generate a precise number of objects or if you want to generate a random number between the two values that are inserted. Additionally, all generators have the Meta Field Rules section in which you can specify additional rules for the generated objects. These are mostly reserved for advanced WordPress users, as they require familiarity with WordPress field types, their accepted values, and if and how they interact with the list of generated users. For this article, we have used this option very sparingly. Having said that, you can insert the values for the options according to your needs. Then, to generate a list of users according to the selected options, click the “Generate” button.
You will need to wait for a bit until all the users have been created. You will see a message stating the number of users that have been created, i.e. faked, and get a list of relevant links, each stating the ID of the created user. Clicking on each of them, you will be redirected to that user’s page from where you can see the user fields created in this process.
Similarly, you can create all the remaining dummy content.
To generate taxonomy term objects, navigate to the FakerPress > Terms section. There, you will be able to select the taxonomies for which you wish to generate new items. These can both be the default WordPress taxonomies – post category and tag, as well as any other custom taxonomy that is registered on your website.
Even though not specifically mentioned in the plugin, this also includes custom taxonomies provided by your plugins (e.g. WooCommerce’s product categories, product tags, and shipping classes). To get a list of available taxonomies, you can simply select the input field next to the Taxonomies label.
Furthermore, this generator allows you to select how many taxonomy items you wish to create, the number of words that their names will possess, and if you wish to set any additional meta field rules on them. As previously mentioned, for every numeric option, you can choose either the exact number of items that are created or set a number range and let the generator randomly select a number from that range. That said, you should adjust the options according to your needs and, then, click the “Generate” button.
Shortly thereafter, the list of generated taxonomy IDs will be displayed, alongside the number of items that have been created. Unfortunately, for the terms generator, the IDs won’t be displayed as links, and you will have to find them manually.
Having created new users and taxonomy terms, you can create the content for your pages, posts, and custom post types and assign the previously generated data to them. To do that, navigate to the FakerPress > Posts section, where the most important generator options are located. Here, you can set the total number of posts that you wish to generate, choose a list of post types that they can belong to, set the publish date on those items, choose a list of parent posts, whether commenting is allowed and a list of authors for those posts.
Of course, for the quantity and date option, you can set a fixed value or choose a number or date range, respectively. Additionally, when choosing a list of parent posts or a list of authors, you can select the corresponding input field to see the list of available entries and select the one(s) you want.
Following that, this generator offers options that concern the post content. These are how many paragraphs the content will have, whether it will use HTML code and which HTML tags, and, finally, which image providers will be used. The plugin offers two possibilities – Lorem Picsum for generating random images and Place-hold.It for generating colored placeholder rectangles.
In the following subsection, you will see a list of taxonomy-related options. These include a list of taxonomies these posts can select, which exact taxonomy terms can be used, how many per post should be ticked, and what percentage of the total post items generated will have taxonomies associated with them. Similar to what was said for the list of authors above can be said here – by positioning within the input fields next to the Taxonomies and Terms options, you will be able to see a list of available values. Needless to say, if you don’t generate users and terms beforehand, then these options will show only the default values available by WordPress, i.e. your account as the user and Uncategorized (category) as the taxonomy term name.
Finally, you can choose a set of meta field rules to further adjust your post content. In our case, we have only set the rules regarding the posts’ featured image – image services, image dimensions, and the percentage of posts which will have a featured image.
This concludes our overview of the options of the Posts generator. You can adjust these options according to your needs and click the “Generate” button to generate new pages, posts, and custom post type items.
You will have to wait for a while until all the pages and posts are created. Then, you will see a message showing how many posts have been “faked” and their corresponding ID links. Clicking on either one, you will be redirected to the corresponding post page, where you can see its content.
Having created the posts, you can generate comments for them and associate them with your dummy posts accordingly. To do so, navigate to the FakerPress > Comments section, where you will see the comments generator options. These options include comment type, a list of post types for which comments will be generated, the number of comments, and their publication dates.
Furthermore, you can choose the number of paragraphs these comments will have, whether they will use HTML code and which HTML tags, as well as set some meta field rules for the generated comments. For this generator, we haven’t set any meta field rules, but have used all the other options. Of course, you can adjust any of these options according to your needs and click the “Generate” button.
Shortly thereafter, the generated comment IDs will appear, and you will be able to review them following theirg links.
Having gone through the final generator, the only thing that remains is to review the created content. An example post is shown below.
As a final note, we will mention that you can use the content generators to create additional content and, even, not in the order that we showcased in the article. Furthermore, if you ever need to reset the dummy content and start from scratch, make sure to use the plugin data eraser located in the FakerPress > Settings, as mentioned above. With it, we conclude this section of the article.
The DemoPress plugin is another content generator plugin we found, with a more beginner-friendly interface. Unlike FakerPress, it is far less known despite having a very similar set of functionalities and being compatible with WooCommerce and bbPress plugins, as stated on the plugin’s page.
As for the functionalities, it can generate content for pages, posts, custom post types, comments, authors, and taxonomy terms. Additionally, you can generate HTML code as part of the content and use three separate sources for images – image placeholders, real images from third party services, or the ones that you upload on the server. It also supports additional rules for generating users, enabling excerpts and assigning terms.
Similar to the previous plugin, it also has a way of removing generated content with additional control over what is deleted. Finally, the DemoPress plugin also has thorough documentation, which you can review if you have any doubts about the steps we covered below. With that being said, let us explain how you can use the plugin.
After installing and activating the plugin, navigate to the Settings > DemoPress section, where all the plugin options are located. They are stored across four separate tabs: Overview, Settings, Tools, and About. In this article, we will focus on the first three only and cover most of the options that are provided within.
Firstly, the Overview tab holds all the content generator options, which are the most important ones for our article. These are Users, Terms, Posts, Comments, and WooCommerce, as the WooCommerce plugin was enabled on our test website.
Following that, the Tools tab offers several handy tools for general management of the plugin. These are the ability to remove all previously generated data, a way to check the update status of the plugin, a way to export or import plugin options, and, finally, a way to erase plugin options directly from the database, as well as an alternative way of disabling the plugin.
For this article, we will only cover the removal tool, similar to what we did with the plugin previously covered. To remove the data generated by the DemoPress plugin, click on the “Tools Panel” button found in the Remove Generated Data option.
This plugin offers more flexibility when deleting any generated content, as you have an overview of all the content created and can choose which to delete by manually ticking the checkbox next to each option. Having made your choice, you can click the “Remove Data” button on the left. Again, making a backup of your website beforehand is advised.
Additionally, the second tab called Settings also has some options worth mentioning. These concern the way of adding images as part of the generated data. Whereas the plugin can create placeholder images, you can also include images from Pixabay.com and Pexels.com by creating and using corresponding API keys. You can find them by clicking on the “API Keys” option. Then, you will see the input fields where you can enter API keys. You will also see helpful “Get API access” links to assist you with this matter.
For this article, we will cover how you can create a Pexels.com API key. This step is only mandatory for users that want to use the Pexels.com site as the image source when using either of the content generators we will show afterward. For that reason, if you don’t plan to use the Pexels.com site for image generation, you can simply skip this part of the article and start with the User generator part instead.
With that being said, to start the API creation process, navigate to the Pexels.com API page. Then, click the “Get Started” button which will open the Sign up screen. From there, log in with your Facebook or Apple account or create a new account using the signup form included.
After successfully logging in to Pexels.com, click the “Your API Key” button.
This will open the “Generate a Pexels API Key” form, in which you need to fill in some information. Those are project name, category, a brief explanation of why you wish to integrate their images and/or videos, URL of the website, and to agree to their TOS and API Guidelines. Of course, you should read said guidelines before agreeing. Having done all the previous, click the “Generate API Key” button.
After waiting a while, your API key will be created and you can copy it and use it with the DemoPress plugin.
More precisely, you need to enter it into the corresponding API key input field we previously mentioned and click the “Save Settings” button to save your option choice. Afterwards, the corresponding image source, in our case Pexels, will be available when choosing the featured image generating source later on.
Having said that, let us proceed to the main purpose of this plugin – the content generator options. We will cover them in the way they are presented on the options screen as it coincides with the order we previously covered.
The Users generator can be accessed by navigating to the Settings > DemoPress section, opening the Overview tab, and clicking the “Generate” button in the Users section. After that, you will see all the respective options, sorted into subsections, as well as information on the generator itself. As for the options, these include the exact number of users you wish to create, the roles they can have, the name of email domains to be used as emails for those users, and a default password for all generated users, if you choose to set it. Furthermore, you can adjust a user’s description by choosing whether to enable it, the size and number of paragraphs it will have, and using which source it will be generated.
Apart from that, we have an additional thing to point out. You may notice that some options and/or suboptions are only visible if a certain option value has been chosen. You should keep this in mind, as it is present for all content generators provided by this plugin. Thus, in some cases, the options that are provided for you might differ from the ones shown on our screenshots, as some of them depend on the option choices you made. Having said that, let us continue.
After adjusting the options according to your needs, click the “Run Generator” button on the left to start the generator task.
Then, you will need to wait until the generator task ends. You will be able to track the progress of the generator task on the right. Then, only after seeing the message stating “The generator task has finished.” should you click the “Stop Generator” button on the left. Unfortunately, the plugin doesn’t offer direct links to the corresponding content that was generated. Still, you can use the generator task log to figure out the data of users added, of which the most important are the username and ID. Then, you can observe the users created, preferably in a separate tab.
To return to the Overview tab, click the “Reset Generator” button. From there, you will be able to select a generator to run next.
In our case, we will show how you can run the Terms generator. Thus, click the “Generate” button in the Terms subsection of the Overview tab to access the options of the Terms generator. These options are sorted into separate tabs for each of the taxonomy terms that are registered on your website. Unlike the FakerPress plugin, which has a singular generator for all the taxonomy terms including WooCommerce-specific ones, this plugin has a separate generator for WooCommerce taxonomy terms, which we will cover later.
That said, you can enable the Terms generator for one or multiple taxonomy terms by ticking the “Enabled” checkbox next to the Generate option in the corresponding tab. For this article, we will showcase only a single taxonomy – the post category, which is the default WordPress taxonomy. And, while it isn’t covered in this article, we must mention that the Demo Press plugin also enables the creation of WooCommerce product categories, product tags, and product shipping classes, as was the case with the FakerPress plugin we previously covered.
After ticking the “Enabled” checkbox, you will get a list of additional options you need to fill out. These include the number of terms you wish to generate, the source for name generation, a maximum of words a term can have, whether it will have a description and how it will be generated, as well as whether to enforce a parent taxonomy term on all generated terms and in which percentage of cases the generated terms will be top-level, i.e. not have a hierarchical parent.
Knowing the purpose of these options now, you will need to adjust them according to your needs. Then, click the “Run Generator” button to start the corresponding generator task.
Similar to what was said before, you can monitor the progress of the generator task on the right. At the start, the message “New generator task is added.” will be shown, while at the end, you will see the “The generator task has finished.” message. After seeing the ending message, click the “Stop Generator” button on the left. Once again, you can use the generator task log to figure out which taxonomy terms were added, their IDs, and names, which will help you observe them.
On the other hand, if you wish to return to the Overview tab, click the “Reset Generator” button.
Having created new users and taxonomy terms, the only thing left is to create new posts, pages, and custom post type items to which users and terms can be assigned. Therefore, from the Overview tab, locate the Posts generator and click the “Generate” button next to it to open the corresponding list of options. Once again, you will see option sets separated into tabs and tied to related pages, posts, or registered custom post types. Each of these tabs will appear in its closed state and will be opened by ticking the corresponding “Enabled” checkbox. As said previously, you can enable as many post types as you wish and run them using the Posts generator. For this article, will showcase how you can do so for Posts only, which represent the blog posts that are available in WordPress by default.
After opening the Posts tab, you will see a list of options organized into subsections. These options include the number of posts that will be created, the number of words their titles can have and using which source are those titles created, how many paragraphs it will have, the paragraph length, which HTML tags will be included, whether the content is compatible with the Gutenberg editor, as well as a range of publishing dates, a list of possible authors separated by commas, whether the excerpt should be enabled, and subsequent excerpt suboptions if you choose to enable it.
Most options are similar to what was offered with the FakerPress plugin, with some notable differences in the ability to enable excerpts, but not use images as HTML tags in the content of posts. More precisely, the DemoPress plugin allows you to add featured images only to the content of posts generated with the Posts generator.
The options related to this allow you to enable the featured image, select their predefined dimensions, and choose an image source from which they are generated. In the case of third party sources like Pexels.com, which are enabled by the API key we previously covered, you will be able to set an additional search query that will narrow the type of images that are generated.
Following that, you can see a set of options that enable you to assign corresponding taxonomy terms which were previously created to the posts generated by the Posts generator. You can choose whether to assign the terms, in what percentage and set a range of terms that can be assigned per generated posts. As mentioned several times throughout the article, the suggested path for the content generator involves creating the authors and taxonomy terms first, so that the newly created posts could be tied to them afterward.
Following that rule, you will ensure that all options are shown and are working properly. Otherwise, if there are no available terms, the corresponding options won’t be shown and the plugin will display a notice for the suggested course of action. This can be seen in the message under the Assign terms for ‘Formats’, which we have purposefully included as a part of the screenshot below.
This concludes the overview of the options available within the Posts generator. To start the generator task, click the “Run Generator” button after adjusting all the options accordingly.
Then, you can monitor the generator task log on the right. After the “The generator task has finished.” message, you can safely disable the task by clicking the “Stop Generator” button on the left. You will also get an overview of the created posts, which you can review later.
To return to the Overview tab, click the “Reset Generator” button afterward.
Following that, let us cover comments generation using the DemoPress plugin. To do so, click the “Generate” button next to the Comments generator within the Overview tab. Once more, you will see corresponding sections with the option for comment creation tied to posts, pages, or specific custom post types. As said before, you can enable as many of these sections as you see fit and generate the comments accordingly. For this article, we will only generate comments for blog posts.
This is done by ticking the “Enabled” checkbox in the Comments for Posts tab. Afterward, a set of options will be shown. These include choosing which posts will be commented on, the number of comments, how the comment is generated and how many paragraphs, how many of the comments will be top-level comments, as well options that concern comment authors – both registered and unregistered website users.
You need to adjust these options as it most suits you. Then, click the “Run Generator” button to start the generator task.
After waiting a while and seeing the “The generator task has finished.” message, you can click the “Stop Generator” button. Then, you will see a list of IDs belonging to comments created which you can review.
To return to the main Overview tab, click the “Reset Generator” button.
As a final part of this section, we have the WooCommerce generator. Using the DemoPress plugin, you can generate WooCommerce products. This is done by ticking the “Enabled” checkbox in the Products tab and filling in the corresponding options.
These options include the number of posts you wish to create, how their titles will be generated and the title word count, how many paragraphs will the product content have, which HTML tags it will use, what the publish dates for those products will be, a set of possible authors separated by commas and whether it will have an excerpt enabled.
Further down, you will also see the options regarding the featured image of a product, including how it will be generated and in which size. Suitable image generators for DemoPress include Placeholder, your local storage of images, or third party services enabled by creating a suitable API key, as mentioned above. In the case you choose to insert a placeholder rectangle instead of an image, you will also get to choose whether it will have a random dark or light background, the number of rectangles it will have within, and what will be shown as text.
Following that, the WooCommerce generator enables you to assign your previously created WooCommerce taxonomies (created with the Terms generator) to the products that will be generated. More precisely, these options concern product categories, product tags, and product shipping classes. For all three, you can choose whether to tie your products with them, in what percentage, and how many will be assigned.
Finally, there are additional options concerning product properties and price. These are setting the default product type, whether it is in stock, how the product SKU number is generated, what the product price range will be, and whether a discount should be applied.
After going through all the options carefully, you should adjust their values according to your needs. Then, click the “Run Generator” button to start the generator task.
After you wait a bit, the generator task will finish, which will be noted in the generator task log with a message stating “The generator task has finished.”. You will also notice a list of created products, with corresponding names and IDs. You can review them in a separate tab. Afterward, click the “Stop Generator” button to end the generator task.
To return to the main Overview tab, click the “Reset Generator” button afterward.
This concludes our overview of the DemoPress plugin. The only thing that remains is to review some of the content created. An example post from our test website is shown below.
Similar to what was said previously, these generators can be used several times over. And, if you need to reset the dummy content you previously created and experimented on, you can use the Remove Generated Data option located in the Tools section we mentioned above. On that note, we conclude the article.
Final Thoughts
There are many purposes for dummy content in WordPress. WordPress developers use dummy content to properly test the functionalities of a theme or plugin they are working on, while for regular WordPress users it can serve as a way of learning more about the WordPress platform, to investigate how specific elements are displayed within the theme they are using or simply use it to speed up the content creation overall.
In this article, we have discussed the ways you generate dummy content in WordPress that are ideal for all WordPress users, regardless of their prior knowledge or understanding of the platform. More precisely, we have covered how you can generate dummy content using two content-generating plugins called FakerPress and DemoPress. Using them, you can generate content for your pages, posts, custom post type, authors, comments, and taxonomy terms. This content is created using in-built generator options, which we have covered in-depth for both plugins. Therefore, we are sure that you will be able to use either one to add dummy content to your WordPress website, and in no time. Finally, since the content generation process we covered can come in handy more often than you think, we strongly recommend bookmarking this article.
