Installation

Requirements

WordPress	6.5 or later
PHP	7.4 or later
A store plugin	WooCommerce or Fluent Cart, active
Tested up to	WordPress 7.0

StoreSeeder needs at least one supported store plugin active, because it writes through that platform’s own models rather than into the database directly.

From WordPress admin

The way most people should install it.

1. In your WordPress admin, go to Plugins → Add New.

2. Search for StoreSeeder.

3. Press Install Now on StoreSeeder – eCommerce Test Data Generator, then Activate.

4. A new StoreSeeder item appears in the admin menu.

From a zip

For a specific version, or a release not yet on the directory.

1. Download the zip from Releases.

2. Go to Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin.

3. Choose the file, press Install Now, then Activate.

From source

For contributing, or running an unreleased branch.

git clone https://github.com/mralaminahamed/storeseeder.git
cd storeseeder
composer install --no-dev
yarn install && yarn build

The admin app is TypeScript and is not committed built, so yarn build is required — build/admin-app.js is what WordPress enqueues.

Why the bundle is called admin-app

Not admin. WP-CLI mangles any bundle whose name ends in min.js, turning admin.js into a.js, which breaks core’s load_script_textdomain() lookup and silently loses every translation.

WP-CLI

wp plugin install storeseeder --activate

Or from a local checkout:

wp plugin activate storeseeder

There is no Requires Plugins header

Deliberately, and it is worth knowing if you were expecting WordPress to enforce a dependency.

That header made WordPress refuse activation without one particular store plugin — which meant no other platform could ever be reached, including on a site with a perfectly good one installed.

StoreSeeder checks for a usable platform at runtime instead, and tells you what it found.

After activating

1. StoreSeeder → Settings — choose a target platform if more than one store plugin is active. With several active and none chosen, StoreSeeder asks rather than guessing, because writing rows into the wrong store is the one failure nobody notices afterwards.

2. StoreSeeder → Recipes — download the recipe archive if you want whole-shop generation. About 90 KB, once, then it works offline.

3. Build a recipe, or pick a generator from the sidebar.

Both downloads — recipes and the optional locale vocabulary — need an administrator to accept a consent prompt first. Declining costs you nothing structural: every generator keeps working from built-in defaults.

Caution

StoreSeeder writes large volumes of data directly into your store. Use it on development and staging sites, and back up your database before generating large datasets.

Uninstalling

Deactivating leaves generated data in place — it is real data in your store, and removing it silently on deactivation would be a surprise.

To remove it, use Settings → Danger zone → Delete generated data before deactivating. That walks StoreSeeder’s own ledger, so it removes what the plugin created and nothing that merely resembles it. See Deleting generated data.