How to Duplicate a WordPress Page with One Click

19th June 2020

How to duplicate a post in WordPress

There are many reasons why you might need to know how to duplicate a page in WordPress. You may have worked hard on getting a page or post on your site just right, and now want a shortcut to duplicate a page or post.

If you need to duplicate a page or post to save yourself time or to test the workings of your site, you have a few options. While you could go through the page, copying parts of it to the new draft page, it won’t copy everything exactly as you need it. You can copy the code to a new page, and we will show you how to do that, though there are easier ways. Plugins that duplicate everything including metadata, post settings, SEO optimisation, images, and more, make creating a clone very simple.

Applying these methods will let you quickly get to the difficult bit of creating the post, without the hassle of getting the page just right. It also makes sure that things are working as intended, let’s review the options.

How to Duplicate a page in WordPress with a Plugin

As with a lot of things you want to achieve with your WordPress site, there is a plugin available to solve your problems. In this case, there are a few to choose from. Let’s take a look at the best plugins on offer to duplicate a WordPress page or post

Duplicate a page or post

You can duplicate a page or post in WordPress. Using the plugins below will allow you to achieve this.

Duplicate Post

Duplicate post plugin

The Duplicate Post plugin is very popular with over 3 million installations, and feedback is almost universally very positive. Let’s look at how it works.

After you have installed and activated the plugin as you usually would, go to “Posts” then “All Posts” and you will see more options below the title of each post. You should see “Clone” and “Draft” next to your standard edit options.

Simply clicking on “Clone” will give you a duplicate of that post. If you click on “Draft”, you will be taken to a new draft version in the post editor. There you can make changes to make a new version of the page.

This plugin works for both posts and pages within WordPress. You can also use it with custom posts if you enable it in the settings.

If you go into “Settings” and then click “Duplicate Post” you can configure the plugin. Here you can select what you need to copy when making a clone, as well as choosing what to add to the title to show it is a duplicate.

The default settings are probably going to be good enough for most sites. This will copy the title, the excerpt, content, featured image, format, template, and menu order as standard. Other options include the author, attachments, status, and date, amongst others.

As well as what to copy, there is a tab for permissions. Here you can set who is allowed to make clone pages; the default is administrator and editor. You can also enable or disable post types.

The last tab is called “Display”. It lets you choose where to show the links when you make a clone. When you are happy with the changes you’ve made to the settings, don’t forget to click the save button.

The other plugins we’ll look at work in a similar way, with their configuration options found in the Settings menu.

Duplicate A Page

Also, well-liked by users, and with over 1 million installs, the Duplicate a Page plugin is another to consider. This offers very similar functions to Duplicate Post but is geared more towards commerce. One of the options for the type of page you can create is product pages. There is also the ability to allow a shop manager or customer to create clone pages if you wish.

When you have installed and activated this plugin, you will find a new option under post titles called “Duplicate This” (you can change this if you want). This creates a new draft by default, but this can be changed to Pending, Private or even Publish. A nice simple way to duplicate a page in WordPress.

Post Duplicator

The Post Duplicator plugin has a rating of 4.5 stars and more than 200,000 installations. This is perhaps a little lacking compared to the standard options of the other plugins here, though it does have some features not found elsewhere that you might find useful.

The creator of the plugin coded it to help him quickly fill sites he was creating with dummy content. Due to this requirement, the settings are limited. You can change the post status for when you create a duplicate page the default is “Same as original”. You can also use the same time as the original post or use the current time, and this can be offset by as long as you want.

If these features appeal, the plugin is lightweight thanks to its simplicity, so shouldn’t slow things down.

Duplicate Page or Post

Another lightweight and straight to the point plugin, Duplicate Page and Post, is liked by its users. Though it doesn’t have as many people using it on their WordPress sites, it does seem to do what it says on the tin.

Activation of the plugin gives you a “Click here to Clone” option under the title of your posts. You can duplicate posts, pages, and custom posts.

The one extra thing this plugin has above other options we’ve looked at is the ability to choose the type of editor you are redirected to when the clone is created. You can set it to send you to the Classic Editor or Gutenberg, and the default is Classic.

How to Duplicate a Whole WordPress Site

If you want to create not just a duplicate page but a whole site, you can do that as well.

NS Cloner – Site Copier

Never Settle’s Cloner plugin lets you take a site on your multisite network and make identical clones. The theme and settings, the plugins and their configurations, and all of the content will be copied over. The only thing that will change is the name you give the site, with automatic domain address replacements.

All you have to do is go into NS Cloner from your WordPress dashboard, select the site you want to copy, and enter the website address and name you want the clone to have. Then with one more click of a button, the new site will be created.

WP Staging – DB & File Duplicator & Migration

If you want to create a duplicate site to test things out without going live and creating problems for your visitors, WP Staging is the plugin for you. At the click of your mouse button, your entire site will be copied and reproduced in a subfolder. Only the admins can access this staging site, and the same login and passwords can be used to test.

The plugin changes the URLs to make sure you can test the site out correctly. The database and file copying go on in the background, and it should only take seconds to create a duplicate depending on the size of your site.

The downside with this plugin is that it doesn’t duplicate the plugins you are using unless you pay for the pro version.

Duplicating Page Layouts in WordPress

If you are using a drag and drop plugin to create your website, like Visual Composer, you might be able to duplicate templates. Some themes offer a page layout builder as well, which will work similarly. While this doesn’t do everything the previous plugins offer, it may be precisely what you are looking for.

When you have created a template design that you like the look of, all you need to do is give it a name and save it. Then when starting a new page, you can select the template design.

Alternatives to Using a Plugin

It is also possible to enable the cloning of pages by altering a file in your WordPress installation. This isn’t for the inexperienced and could lead to problems with your website. It involves adding a lot of code to the “functions.php” file, though we aren’t advising this since there are so many great plugins that save you this trouble.

The other method of how to duplicate WordPress page content is to copy the code to a new draft version manually. Start by going to the page or post you want to copy, then click the “More Tools & Options” menu and select “Code Editor”.

Highlight the code and copy it, pasting it into the “Code Editor” in the new page or post you’ve created. Click on “More Tools & Options” in the new post and select “Visual Editor”. You should now see that the post is an exact copy of the other one.

If you want to duplicate multiple pages, however, you are going to have to repeat the process over and over again. This is why using a page duplication plugin is going to be the best approach.

Final Thoughts

When you find out the easy ways for how to duplicate WordPress page setups, you will be creating clones in minutes. While installing and setting up the plugin does require more than a single click, once you have it working one mouse button press is all it takes. This is just another way in which WordPress can help make things easier and save you time.

If you need any help don’t hesitate to contact ThriveWP via our contact page.

Gavin Pedley

Gavin Pedley

Gavin is the guy behind the award-winning ThriveWP. He has over 18 years of experience creating, developing, hosting and managing WordPress websites.

Gavin regularly shares his expertise via the ThriveWP blog and Youtube channel, where he creates informative and helpful WordPress tutorial videos.

Connect with Gavin on FacebookLinkedin or Twitter.

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