“Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start writing!”
Every new WordPress site comes with a sample post ("Hello world!"), a sample page ("Sample Page") and a sample comment. If they're still published, visitors find them in your blog, your menu, your sitemap and search results, and read your site as new or abandoned. It happens on finished sites too: the post stays published after a redesign, a staging copy becomes live, or a migration recreates the defaults.
Is your site showing it right now?
The free scan loads your page like a visitor and checks for this message, plus broken links, script errors and phone layout. It also walks your signup, booking or contact form, without sending anything.
Free, no signup. Usually done in about a minute.Why it happens
- The site was launched without deleting the defaults, or they came back when WordPress was reinstalled or migrated
- The blog page shows every published post, including the sample one
- "Sample Page" is published and the menu was set to add new pages automatically
- A theme or page-builder template imported its own demo posts and pages
- The sample comment ("Hi, this is a comment") is still approved on the sample post
How to fix it
Delete the sample post and page
Posts > All Posts: trash "Hello world!". Pages > All Pages: trash "Sample Page" (and any "Privacy Policy" draft you never finished). Then empty the trash so the content is gone, not just hidden.
Delete the sample comment
Comments: delete "Hi, this is a comment" from the WordPress Commenter. If you don't want comments at all, turn them off under Settings > Discussion.
Clean up the demo content
If a theme or builder imported demo posts, products or pages you don't use, delete them too. Search Posts, Pages and Media for the demo site's name.
Fix the menu and the blog page
Appearance > Menus: remove the sample page if it's there, and turn off "Automatically add new top-level pages" unless you want it. If your blog page is now empty, write a real first post or set the blog page to a static page.
Check what search engines see
Search Google for site:yourdomain.com. If the sample post is indexed, it drops out after you delete it; request removal in Search Console to speed it up. Set the tagline too if it still reads "Just another WordPress site".
Questions
Is it bad to leave them?
It's a small thing that reads as a big one: visitors and customers judge whether the site is maintained. The sample post also shows up in search results for your name with WordPress's text under it.
Can I just unpublish instead of deleting?
Yes: set them to Draft or Private and they disappear from the site. Deleting is tidier and stops them coming back in exports.
They came back after a migration.
Some migration and installer tools run WordPress's install step again, which creates the defaults. Delete them once more and check the plugin's settings; it won't affect your real content.
Can Page Canary tell me if this comes back?
Yes. Page Canary checks your key pages every day for this message and others like it, confirms it on a second check, and emails you with the fix. One site is free.