WordPress Sample Content Resources

When you’re developing a new WordPress theme, whether it be for a client project or a something you plan to release as a free or premium theme, it’s always a good idea to test against some dummy content that includes a variety of posts, pages, categories and navigational structure.

Sample content makes it easy to check your stylesheet and theme files have accounted for most, if not all, eventualities once your theme is in someone else hands.

These are a few of the resources I’ve found useful in testing whilst hacking away at a WordPress theme. One thing to note is that it’s a good idea to bring this dummy content in as early as possible in your development process – before you add much of your ‘real’ content – otherwise deleting this content can be a bit of a chore (especially with the larger imports).

Easier Theme Development with Sample WordPress Content – WPCandy

This gem from WPCandy has been around for a while now but I still find myself using it at the start of most new projects.

It’s not too much content to have to remove once you’ve checked everything in your theme is working, so is ideal to use on a client site.

It includes multiple posts with different elements in each (including a couple of really useful ‘Another Post With Everything In It’ types that use most all the selectors you’ll want to have declared in your style.css), 12 posts so pagination is forced, comments, parent / child / grandchild categories and pages, tags and archives.

It’s just a simple import into your WordPress install via Tools > Import. Get it here.

Theme Unit Test – WordPress Codex

Straight from the horse’s mouth. If you’re planning to make a theme available for public download on the Free Themes Directory, it’s a good idea to test against this. It’s a pretty exhaustive set of content that will expose any errors in your code before you get to the submission stage.

The copious referencing of requirements your theme should stand up to are also detailed on this page, so it’s a useful reference if you’re planning to submit to the WordPress.org gallery or plan on selling your work. Get it here.

Demo Data Creator – for Multisite/Buddypress

This could be a very useful plugin option (it’s not just an imported file like the above) if you are setting out on a WordPress multi-site or BuddyPress project. Not for the faint of heart though: see the issue here.

It’s intensely laborious setting up dummy accounts and trying to hypothesise every action on your site – this can help with fresh installs / local test sites.

If you’re experimenting with WordPress 3.0 multisite features and/or Buddypress and feel like giving it a spin on a test install, get it here.

Duh, what have I missed?

These are just the resources I’ve been using – if you know of better or just have an opinion, please feel free to go nuts in the comments.