Quick start with sample data

The quickest way to see Programmatic SEO work is the Quick start. It creates everything a task needs, using 20 European cities as data. Nothing is generated until you ask for it, and you can delete the whole sample with one click.

Create the sample

1. Open Programmatic SEO.
2. On a site with no tasks and no data tables yet the screen shows Create your first programmatic pages with three steps (Add your data, Design a template, Create a task). Click Try it with sample data. On a site that already has tasks or tables, click Quick start in the page header instead.
3. The dialog Quick start with sample data explains: "Creates a sample data source with 20 cities, a page template and a task — all labeled “Sample” so you can delete them later." Click Create sample (with Try it with sample data the sample is created at once).

The dialog now lists three things:

The task itself is created paused: no page exists yet.

Generate the first pages

Click Generate first 10 pages now. The dialog shows Generation progress ("Generating… 4 of 10 pages created.", "About 30 pages per minute, 15 seconds left.", or "Waiting for the background runner to start…" until WordPress cron picks the job up; see Running and scheduling).

When it stops you see "10 are live. Edit the template to change all of them at once." The button becomes Generate 10 more pages (it always offers the remaining count) so you can finish the other 10.

Click View pages to open the task's pages list, and open one of the URLs, for example https://your-site.example/sample-cities/paris/.

Try things

• Edit Sample: City page template (a normal page; open it from the dialog). All generated pages change, because they are rendered from the template on every visit.
• Open the task (Edit on its card) and change the title, for example to Visit {{ pseo.src.sample_cities.name }}. Then Save and run now. Titles update; URLs stay.
• Open the data table in Data Tables, change a value and watch the page change (see Freshness and caches).

Delete the sample

Click Delete sample. The dialog Delete the sample? says: "The sample data source, template, task and its pages are deleted." Confirm with Delete sample. The task and all its pages, the template page (permanently, not to the trash) and the data table are removed. Pages you converted to posts earlier are real posts and stay.

Good to know

• The sample counts against your plan: 1 task and up to 20 pages (see Limits and plans). If your task limit is already reached the dialog says "Your plan’s task limit is reached. Delete a task or upgrade to add the sample."
• If a data table with the key sample_cities exists that the quick start did not create, nothing is created: "A data source with the key “sample_cities” already exists and was not created by the quick start."
• Running Create sample again reuses what still exists and recreates only what you deleted.
• The template is a draft on purpose. Generated pages show its content even if the template is not published (the task editor warns about this; it is only informational). The template page itself is never indexed and never listed in a sitemap, see Serving pages.
• The sample URLs are real and public (and listed in the sitemap) while they exist. Delete the sample before you launch a site.