I realize the concept may seem kind of silly to most people, but I recently needed to fill one of my WordPress sites with a bunch of fake content in order to do some testing. Rather than going through the tedious process of trying to create a bunch of fake posts and pages myself, constantly switching back and forth between lipsum.com and my test WordPress site, formatting the content in different ways; I headed to Google to see what I could find.
I came across a very helpful post on the CSS Tricks forum. A few weeks ago, someone posted a question looking for the exact same type of information I was seeking. Thankfully, another user came along and posted some great possible solutions.
Because I was looking for filler pages and filler posts, I went ahead and used two of the solutions listed in his post. I happened to use the first one simply because it was listed first and it included enough filler posts and pages for me to start my testing. Depending on your needs, you can use any and/or all of them if you choose. A fair word of warning, though, that they all include the generic “About” page that’s included with every WordPress installation, so you may need to go back and delete one or more of those if you use these filler packs (since your initial WordPress install will already include that page, even using just one of these filler packs will create a duplicate).
Following are the links that were posted by the user rudynorman in the CSS Tricks forums, just in case the original post gets removed or changed in the future.
- 12 sample posts (to force pagination of home page), 10 sample pages, multiple sample categories, image attachments and more – http://wpcandy.com/articles/easier-theme-development-with-the-sample-post-collection.html
- 10 sample posts, 5 sample pages, multiple sample categories and more – http://designwoop.com/2008/09/wordpress-xml-import-download/
- 30 sample posts, 5 sample pages, multiple sample categories and more – http://thinkdesignblog.com/wordpress-lorem-ipsum-test-post-pack.htm
- 11 sample posts, no sample pages, 5 sample categories, etc. – http://wpguerrilla.com/free-WordPress-dummy-post-download/
At this point, you might be wondering why someone might need all of this filler content on a blog. Granted, most WordPress users wouldn’t ever have a need for this. However, if you have to develop a new WordPress theme or a plug-in or widget that depends on content being available, a tool like the ones listed above can be invaluable.
One Response
I’ve been looking for this also. Thanks. Need it to do testing in mock up WP setup. :)