Developing a WordPress Theme, especially for a client or public release, can be difficult when you use the default installation of WordPress. It only gives you one Post with a comment, and one Page to start with. Not much.

This used to be a problem for me when I start coding a new Theme. As I go, I had to create Posts and Pages, populate the comments, move publish dates around, just to have content fill up the site so I can inspect then code and style the design. I’m sure you know what I mean. So I then decided to take some time and create my own standard content that I could import and reuse, saving much more time in the future and share something with the WordPress community.

I managed to put together into an XML file, a seemingly full content site that you can import right into a new installation of WordPress. You can use it to develop your Theme or have it in a demo site to showcase your Theme’s visual styles. These are the descriptions of what you’ll get.

Posts and Pages

  • 9 Pages including 5 Sub Pages (the “About” page renamed to avoid doubles)
  • 14 Posts to ensure pagination
  • Short and long Post titles
  • Posts in single and multiple categories
  • Posts with and without tags
  • Password protected Post

HTML elements

  • Heading 1 to 6
  • Strong, emphasized, and striked through words
  • Hyperlinks
  • Images with captions (floated and inline), emoticons
  • Ordered and unordered lists two levels deep
  • Blockquotes
  • Code and preformatted text
  • Superscripts and subscripts
  • Tables and definition lists
  • Big and small fonts

Comments

  • Threaded comments for WordPress 2.7
  • Comments from admin
  • Pingback and trackback samples
  • Post with comments closed (with and without comments prior to closing)
  • Post with ping/trackbacks closed
  • Post with both comments and ping/trackback closed

Categories and tags

  • 11 categories, including 2 child categories to fill the list
  • Category descriptions
  • 29 tags with various post counts

Archive

  • 14 months of archives to fill the list

How to use

  • Download and extract the file to your computer
  • Log into your Dashboard and go to Tools -> Import (or Manage -> Import for WordPress 2.6 and lower).
  • Select WordPress at the bottom of the list
  • Browse and select the XML file then hit the Upload button