Creating sample content for quick demo guide setup

If you are starting a blog from scratch, you will find it useful to publish a few test or "dummy" posts, so that you have some content to work with as you set up your blog feed layouts. Without posts published, even if you are properly assigning settings in the theme Customizer,  you won't be able to see how those settings look, because there's no content to draw from. 

This is especially frustrating if you've never blogged before—we know how exciting it is to get started, and how confusing it can be if nothing on your site looks like how you were anticipating!

HOW TO QUICKLY CREATE SAMPLE/DUMMY CONTENT

Here's what to do to create sample content on your site:

1. CREATE SEVERAL NEW POSTS

Start with 5 or 6 posts; more if you plan on having a longer Home Page with lots of features. 

  • Click here for step-by-step instructions on how to create a new blog post.
2. ADD YOUR SAMPLE PARAGRAPH CONTENT

Copy and paste in sample paragraph content (i.e., the text in a blog post). If you don't have this content and need to generate some quickly, try creating some for free at Cupcake Ipsum, a text auto-generation service.

3. ADD A FEATURED IMAGE TO EACH POST

Click here to learn how to add a featured image to a blog post. Featured images are essential for imagery to appear properly in blog post feeds. If you need a place to download free images, check out Unsplash—most of the images on our demo sites are from there, anyway!

4. ASSIGN A CATEGORY TO EACH POST AS YOU GO.

You can learn how to do this here, and learn more about categories here. 

Creating categories and attaching them to your sample posts will help you set up menus. To save time later, if you know what topics you plan on blogging about (e.g. "Beauty," "Style," and "Motherhood"), you can establish these categories now and use them on your "real" blog posts later!

5. PUBLISH EACH POST AS YOU FINISH THE STEPS ABOVE!

You'll now have a running archive of sample posts to work with as you customize your blog feed layouts.

BONUS POINTS:

  • Set up a couple menus, so you can decide how you'd like to establish your site navigation.
  • Create a couple new pages, so you can link to them in your menus or sidebars.
  • Create a few sample images for use in sidebar or content block interstitial widgets. You can view a library of all EmPress widgets here, which will help you think about which features you want to add to your sidebars and content block interstitials!