How to Add Dummy Text to WordPress Sites

How to Add Dummy Text to WordPress SitesIn some particular cases, it’s useful to know how to add dummy text to WordPress sites. Indeed, you should pump up only stellar content to attract prospects, but dummy content has its role.

You have probably noticed that a lot of WordPress theme demos are filled with “lorem ipsum dolor” content. This is an example of dummy text. It helps people evaluate a theme in its entirety without being distracted by the content.

Stick with us to learn why dummy text has its relevance and how to add it to your sites.

The Role of Dummy Text

Dummy text is a genuine help for theme and plugin developers. Sites look more authentic by adding dummy text. For instance, people who want to purchase a blogging theme want to see how a published article will look. Adding a few words within tags in addition to a sample paragraph is a solution. However, adding dummy text is more relevant for a complete blog post. In fact, it shows how a blog post will look.

Use dummy text for clients’ projects too. Adding “lorem ipsum” content to the client’s sites makes them look more realistic. It’s simple to add filler text (aka dummy text) and it facilitates people to get a clear perspective of the site.

How to Add Dummy Text

Two methods to add dummy text to WordPress sites are plugins and dummy text generators. Theme Unit Test doesn’t generate dummy text, but it has a similar purpose and it’s a precious tool for WordPress developers. You will learn more about it in the next paragraphs.

WordPress Plugins to Add Dummy Text

There are only a few WordPress plugins to add dummy text that are currently supported by their developers. There were significantly more alternatives a few years ago. However, the developers either stopped providing support or the plugins haven’t been tested against the latest three WordPress major updates. It looks like making plugins that generate dummy text isn’t a profitable affair. Luckily, the following plugins work and you can use them confidently.

FakerPress

1-FakerPress

FakerPress is the most downloaded dummy text generator on the WordPress repository and it has an almost perfect rating. The plugin not only generates “lorem ipsum” content, but also creates random comments, categories, tags, posts, and users. Activate and install it the same way you do with other plugins. Go to the admin dashboard, click on FakePress > Posts, fill out the required information, and click on the Generate button. Go to Posts to see the posts that have been generated.

The plugin impresses with its large array of options for creating fake posts. You can decide:

  • the number of posts to generate
  • the publishing date
  • the authors of the posts
  • the number of paragraphs
  • the categories of the posts

FakerPress allows the random generation of comments, terms, and users. All you have to do is to play with the FakerPress options.

WP Lorem ipsum

2-WP Lorem ipsum

WP Lorem ipsum is a simple plugin that does its job perfectly. Go to Settings > WP Lorem ipsum and choose the number of posts, the post type, the number of paragraphs, the post status, and the authors of the posts. Click on the Send button and it will generate the desired posts.

Dummy Text Generator

3-dummy text generator

This is the simplest and most lightweight plugin to generate dummy text. All you have to do is to install it and place the [dummy-text] shortcode wherever you need dummy text.

Dummy Text Generators

Thankfully, there are more dummy text generators than plugins. Indeed, the plugins are specially developed for the WordPress ecosystem and the texts are generated automatically. However, the dummy text generators work fine too. The only downside is that you have to place the texts manually on your site. Here are a few options to generate lorem ipsum texts.

Lipsum

4-lorem ipsum

The simplicity of use is the main advantage of this app. If you like, you can read a short history of the lorem ipsum text. Write how many items you want Lipsum to generate and chose from paragraphs, words, bytes, or lists. Copy the generated text and paste it on your site.

Random Text Generator

This app comes with two useful stand-out features. First, you can choose between HTML and plain text. Second, it can generate random texts in multiple languages, not just English or Latin.

Blind Text Generator

5-blind text generator

Ignore the outdated design of this app to get the most from it. Blind Text Generator has a few styles to generate dummy text. Lorem ipsum is, of course, one of them. Cicero, Kafka and Li Europan lingues are other styles. These generate dummy texts in Latin and English.

Godfather ipsum

Do you want to impress the customers with fancy lorem ipsum text? Godfather ipsum may be a solution. It generates dummy text in Godfather style! Practically, the app generates texts about the Corleone family in English. It’s a nice idea, but you take a risk by using it: viewers will focus on the text instead of the site design!

Cupcake Ipsum

7-cupcake ipsum

Cupcake Ipsum is another cool dummy text generator. You will impress clients who like sweets. This app creates dummy texts consisting of words related to sweets. You can select the number of paragraphs and their length – short, medium, or long.

Legal Ipsum

The name of this app is pretty self-explanatory – it generates legal-sounding texts. It doesn’t exactly have the wow factor, but this kind of text may be a detail that matters for clients in the field of law.

Theme Unit Test

Theme Unit Test is an .xml file provided by WordPress.org aimed at testing a theme. Practically, it generates pages, posts, comments, menus, attachments – everything that could possibly be needed to see how the theme behaves when used for a medium-size website. Follow these steps to test your theme:

6-WordPress-run-importer

  • You will be redirected to a new page. Click on Upload File and Import.
  • Assign an author to the imported content imported.
  • Once you tick the “Download and Import file attachment”, click on Submit. It will take a few minutes to import all the files.

8-import-authors

At this stage, your site includes lots of new pages, posts, comments, and other stuff so you can make a clear opinion about the theme you have used. Unfortunately, it comes with a huge disadvantage: the site database burdens considerably due to the new additions to your site. It impacts the loading speed, which you certainly don’t want.

There are two solutions to fix this problem. The first solution is to visit the site database and delete the table entries generated by the Theme Unit Test. It requires a high degree of technical expertise, so less knowledgeable users should avoid it. A more accessible solution is to use a local site copy to import and run the Theme Unit Test. You could eventually use this copy to test new plugins or code tweaks. A local site copy is useful in the long term, so setting it up isn’t a waste of time.

Wrapping Up

You have learned how to add dummy text to WordPress. It’s simple and only takes a few minutes. A plugin is easier for WordPress users, but dummy text generators are also effective. Sadly, there isn’t a large offering of plugins – FakerPress being the most complex. You can live without adding dummy texts on your themes or sites. Still, it’s a sign of professionalism and it helps clients focus on the site design.