# Dummy user to create initial content
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/dummy-user-to-create-initial-content/83896
**Category:** Support
**Created:** [March 26, 2018, 7:28pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/dummy-user-to-create-initial-content/83896 "2018-03-26T19:28:08Z")
**Posts on this page:** 12
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@mucio](https://meta.discourse.org/u/mucio)
#### Post date: [March 26, 2018, 7:28pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/dummy-user-to-create-initial-content/83896/1 "2018-03-26T19:28:08Z")
We just installed Discourse in our company and started to show it to people. Of course we need content to convince them to move conversations to Discourse, to do this we need to put more content.
My idea was to copy some of the questions I saw today in one of our chatroom to Discourse, but I didn’t want to post them with my user (it will look weird).
Is there a way to create a dummy user, like admin or Discobot, and impersonate it to post questions and answers?
Anyway we are also using Google SSO if this changes anything.
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### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [March 26, 2018, 10:17pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/dummy-user-to-create-initial-content/83896/2 "2018-03-26T22:17:38Z")
The traditional way to do this is with multiple accounts – use [email plus addressing](https://gmail.googleblog.com/2008/03/2-hidden-ways-to-get-more-from-your.html) to sign up as multiple users, and you can also use your [browser accounts feature](https://www.pcworld.com/article/2089364/how-to-create-and-manage-multiple-user-profiles-in-chrome.html) to have multiple sets of cookies / identities per browser.
Where are the target conversations? Chat? What software?
Long term we had talked about forwarding long email chains into Discourse, and having it automatically create a topic and stage all the users, but we keep pushing that back. cc @zogstrip
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### Author:  [@mucio](https://meta.discourse.org/u/mucio)
#### Post date: [March 26, 2018, 10:35pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/dummy-user-to-create-initial-content/83896/3 "2018-03-26T22:35:29Z")
Wow, I never thought of doing in that way.
Unfortunately it looks like the `+` or the `.` don’t work with gmail for business account. And I cannot get a new account just for testing/pushing Discourse.
Target discussions are currently in HipChat rooms, but of course not all chat messages are needed in Discourse.
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### Author:  [@HAWK](https://meta.discourse.org/u/HAWK)
#### Post date: [March 26, 2018, 10:59pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/dummy-user-to-create-initial-content/83896/4 "2018-03-26T22:59:42Z")
You could set up a basic gmail account for this purpose though.
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### Author:  [@mucio](https://meta.discourse.org/u/mucio)
#### Post date: [March 27, 2018, 11:45am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/dummy-user-to-create-initial-content/83896/5 "2018-03-27T11:45:03Z")
I see your point, but at moment I can allow people to register only from the company addresses and there are not dummy addresses for that.
At this point I think I will need to impersonate system or discobot…
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### Author:  [@ssvenn](https://meta.discourse.org/u/ssvenn)
#### Post date: [March 27, 2018, 12:09pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/dummy-user-to-create-initial-content/83896/6 "2018-03-27T12:09:38Z")
I think you should be able to use this method to create some fake users: [Create an admin account from the console](https://meta.discourse.org/t/create-admin-account-from-console/17274)
You have to grant them admin privileges to successfully create them with fake mail addresses (it doesn’t skip the email validation step for non-admins), then you can go into the admin panel and find them under Users, revoke the admin rights and follow the steps from [Impersonating a user](https://meta.discourse.org/t/impersonating-a-user/80862)
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### Author:  [@HAWK](https://meta.discourse.org/u/HAWK)
#### Post date: [March 27, 2018, 5:20pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/dummy-user-to-create-initial-content/83896/7 "2018-03-27T17:20:50Z")
> [@mucio](#):
>
> At this point I think I will need to impersonate system or discobot…
You can’t actually do that.
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### Author:  [@mucio](https://meta.discourse.org/u/mucio)
#### Post date: [April 4, 2018, 1:49pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/dummy-user-to-create-initial-content/83896/8 "2018-04-04T13:49:40Z")
> [@HAWK](#):
>
> You can’t actually do that.
damn ☹
I will try to do as @ssvenn suggested.
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### Author:  [@damechen](https://meta.discourse.org/u/damechen)
#### Post date: [July 20, 2019, 5:22am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/dummy-user-to-create-initial-content/83896/9 "2019-07-20T05:22:22Z")
How do you know if an address is a company one?
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### Author:  [@system](https://meta.discourse.org/u/system)
#### Post date: [January 12, 2023, 2:36pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/dummy-user-to-create-initial-content/83896/10 "2023-01-12T14:36:37Z")
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### Author:  [@JammyDodger](https://meta.discourse.org/u/JammyDodger)
#### Post date: [January 16, 2023, 11:57am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/dummy-user-to-create-initial-content/83896/11 "2023-01-16T11:57:45Z")
Just an update on this one -
You could create several users with nonsense email addresses and then activate them from their `admin/user` page. As you don’t actually need to send them an email you also don’t need to validate their email either.
It is possible to impersonate system and Discobot, but you would need to be a ‘sysadmin’ admin for that (ie. you need to have your account email in the `DISCOURSE_DEVELOPER_EMAILS` section of your `app.yml`).
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### Author:  [@JammyDodger](https://meta.discourse.org/u/JammyDodger)
#### Post date: [January 17, 2023, 11:58am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/dummy-user-to-create-initial-content/83896/12 "2023-01-17T11:58:46Z")
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