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Owning a website is not a piece of cake. You have to invest ample time and effort towards its maintenance every day if you want it to provide positive returns.
A webmaster has to keep the content updated regularly and deal with the problems the website encounters from time to time. A bit of wit and technical mind with good rational thinking comes in a lot handy when dealing with everyday WordPress problems.
If you go smart about it, it’s not much of a hustle and you will do just fine. One of the situations you can come across among your daily struggles is when you want to duplicate a page or a post.
You want to create a new page which is identical to an already existing one. You don’t want to go through all the trouble again when it’s all already there. The question is how to duplicate a page in WordPress or even a post.
This problem is going to be the centre of discussion for the article we are publishing today. This is a very important task considering your page might have some videos and graphic content. It’ll get really frustrating when there is a need to add all the media files again or manually write all the text of the page again.
One method you could opt for is the old-fashioned easy-going copy-paste thingy. But it is not always convenient especially when there are many posts that need copying. You could lose the track of a number of posts copied and there is too much room for human errors which are undesirable.
Fortunately for you, there are some third-party plugins available on the internet that would help you deal with the issue. You can make a duplicate of your pages or posts using them. You may change or tweak these to create some new post that is almost the same as the original ones.
How to Duplicate a Page or Post in WordPress
This section will let you move through the starters as to how to duplicate a page in WordPress. When you come to know about it, it’s not very difficult to deal with after all.
You can use any of the three methods which are:
- You can duplicate the posts using the “clone” link which will be added to every post or page in the WordPress admin.
- You can also duplicate the post using a plugin from external sources. A ‘duplicate this’ will be applied to every post.
- You can also use WP Bulk Post Duplicator to copy the post in bulk in a single go. This is also a good option from a user’s perspective.
We will describe these methods one by one in the text which follows from here. You’ll hopefully get a grip of this by the end of the post. We will also suggest some good plugins that will be helpful for the job. So, without any further ado, let us get started!
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Semi-Manual Way
This is the quickest method if you don’t have much content to copy. It saves the time which you will invest while installing a new plugin and takes you right to the main drill.
However, if there is a considerable amount of content you are going to copy, this option is not recommended. You might as well skip this section in that case.
So now we only have those of you going through the section who don’t have a bulk amount of content/pages to duplicate. Let us start the discussion about how to go about the process.
First of all, you will have to open the post you are going to duplicate. Now make sure that you have not selected any separate section from the whole post as you have to select the whole post or the page collectively at once.
For this, you will click outside of the block or at the top right section where the document tab is present in the editing page. Make sure you do this properly as if there is a single section under your selection, WordPress will only copy-paste that part and leave the rest of the blog or post.
Now on the editing screen, there will be an ellipsis at the top right of the editing screen. You will need to click on it and then an options bar will show.
In the lower section of the menu, there will be an option calling out as ‘copy all content’. You will need to select this one. There will be a message appearing telling you that the content is duplicated.
Now you will create the new post which you want to establish. Give it a title and click on the editing box which appears on the editing screen for you. Use shortcut keyboard keys such as ‘Ctrl+v’ to copy the content there.
If you are a Mac user, use ‘cmd+c’ instead and you are good to go. Now the content of the old post can be seen in your new post just as you wanted.
It is time to make the necessary changes by editing and changing it from the previous page or post which you copied. This is a necessary step as there is no point in exactly duplicating content on the same blog. It is a bad SEO practice and an overall bad impression as well.
By using a Plugin
This section is dedicated to the users who have to copy a lot of the content into their new post or page. This is the quickest, safest and tension-free way. You will save your time, there will be no possibilities for unnecessary human errors, and you will easily deal with the drill very quickly.
You can copy anything you want using this method. This is a good option for custom post types as this scenario is much more desirable from their position. Here are a few plugins that we strongly recommend while using this method for your website:
WooCommerce
WooCommerce is not originally a content duplicating website so it might sound strange to include it in our list. If you are already using WooCommerce as an eCommerce plugin, it is good news for you that WooCommerce allows you to copy content without the need of any other plugin.
Even if you are not a user, you can make use of the combined features and kill two birds with one stone. You will get features of an eCommerce plugin and easily copy-paste your content whenever you like with what you already have!
When you navigate to the main content page in WooCommerce and bring the cursor over any blogpost/ page, you will see a duplicate link option there. You need to click on the duplicate link and an identical new post will be ready for you just like that!
You will be directed to the editing screen of the new post where you can just paste the link and get your content ready for publishing. The slug of the new post will be the same as the original one with a ‘copy’ added to it.
So, in addition to changing the title of the post, you will need to make changes in the slug as well.
Duplicate Post Plugin
Duplicate Post is one of the most celebrated plugins for copying the posts with a whopping 3 million downloads.
When you add this plugin, it will automatically be added to the clone link to each post in the main posts section of the WordPress admin.
Now, you will simply need to select the clone link of the post you need to copy, and a fresh post is established with the similar content ready to get published!
After that, all you need to do is to make the necessary changes so that it does not look exactly the same as the old one and add a new title to it.
You can also access the exact clone link in the pages and the custom post types.
Duplicate Page
Duplicate Page plugin is also a popular one with 900,000 downloads worldwide. It is a good alternative to Duplicate Post Plugin and if you are not using the WooCommerce plugin already.
After you install this plugin, all you need to do is to navigate to the post or page you want to duplicate. Move to the admin section or the admin of the custom type posts.
You will find a ‘duplicate this’ option under every one of them. Once you click it, a duplicate post or page will appear for you in the editing section. Then you can make the changes that you prefer.
It is important to note that this link will not appear in the WooCommerce eCommerce plugin as it will be overridden by the plugin’s default link. Same will be the case for the plugin discussed before this one.
In Bulk
The plugins that are already mentioned above will allow you to copy the posts one by one, however, this might not be the most desirable option for you in case you have a significant amount of pages to copy.
If you want to copy all the content of your page at once, then you will need a bulk duplicating phenomenon. For this, we can suggest WP Bulk Post Duplicator without any hesitation. Now, rather than adding a link to the copied posts, you can just access the settings tab that allows you to copy posts in a bulk quantity free of trouble.
It is useful to note that this plugin has not seen any updates for almost two years now and it is, therefore, advisable to test this plugin before installing it on your live site.
After you have established the plugin, just go to Settings > WP Bulk Post Duplicator to access the settings screen for the plugin. First, check the posts that you want to copy and the statuses as well.
Now, when you check a post and then publish, the plugin will then duplicate the whole post. If you only select posts and draft, you will copy all your draft posts.
For duplicating posts from a whole year, you can go down and check the year for the posts you want to access and declare the status of the posts. If nothing is selected, it will be drafted by default.
Now select the copy button, the plugin shall copy your posts. You will need to go through all pages plus make the necessary changes in order to avoid making them look identical to the previous ones.
The bulk copying will help you reduce the time of the total drill, but you will have to put some effort in the last step. Hopefully, AI will take over this step soon (yikes!)
Summary
This post was meant to help you understand the best ways to duplicate a page in WordPress and give you some sigh of relief from your trouble. We at BionicWP are dedicated to giving our viewers the best and most easily accessible solutions to their problems. We hope that by now, you have selected the method you will be using to duplicate your posts.
Duplicating the posts is one thing but you should be careful not to make your content look absurd by making it an absolute copy. It is better to make some changes and make it look somehow discreet.
You can reduce the time by using a plugin for duplicating your posts. Especially if they are in bulk. If you have to copy only a few posts, you will find the ‘copy content’ option as the best and the quickest ones though there will always be room for errors in this one.
If you have to copy the content frequently and in bulk, it is better to use a plugin to avoid any undesired human errors and make your content look naïve. Good luck and happy duplicating!
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