How to Duplicate Pages in WordPress and Plugin Recommendations
There are numerous reasons why one might need to duplicate a WordPress page or post.
Do you need duplicate posts to perform content updates? Or perhaps you want to use a specific layout for a new page on your WordPress site?
Whatever the reason is, there are multiple ways to duplicate a post and page in WordPress. This tutorial will explain different methods to duplicate a post or a page in WordPress, both with and without a plugin.
Duplicating Page or Post with WordPress Plugin
You might be thinking to manually copy and paste your WordPress post or page to make a duplicate. Moreover, WordPress now provides the ‘copy all content’ option within its block editor. However, for duplicating pages and posts, this process is not ideal.
When you manually duplicate a post or a page in WordPress, you’ll only copy the text of your content. This means that you’ll have to copy your page template, images, and SEO elements such as meta descriptions and title tags separately.
Not only will the process take a long time, but it will also be frustrating if you have many WordPress posts, pages, or custom post types to duplicate.
Duplicating a page or a post can also harm your position in search rankings. However, there are times when you need to duplicate your content and reuse it as a template for a new post or a page on your WordPress website.
Fortunately, with the help of a post duplication plugin, you can easily duplicate pages or posts without having to worry about making any errors.
Take a look at our selection of the best WordPress plugins to duplicate posts, pages, and custom post types. Plus, we’ll also show how to use them:
1. Duplicate Post Plugin
Duplicate Post plugin from Yoast is one of the go-to options for this purpose. Aside from cloning posts or pages, you can also duplicate comments, slug, menu order, and much more.
In addition, the plugin allows you to add a title prefix or a suffix, so you’ll know which one is the original and which one is the copy.
Let’s say you set “Copy of” as the title prefix. If you duplicate a post titled “What is WordPress“, the duplicate will be named “Copy of What is WordPress.”
To duplicate content using the plugin, follow these simple steps:
- Install the plugin and activate it.
- Go to your WordPress dashboard, then click on Pages -> All Pages (if you want to duplicate a page) or Post -> All Post (if you’re going to duplicate a post).
- Hover the page or post you want to clone, and you will see two new options there – Clone and New Draft.
- Click the Clone link to duplicate the selected post, or choose New Draft to create a new post of the cloned content and open it in the post editor.
2. Duplicate Page and Post
Duplicate Page and Post enables you to duplicate pages and posts in WordPress quickly. The plugin can duplicate a page or post without changing post type, content, title, or style.
Using this plugin is relatively easy. You just need to follow these steps to duplicate a post or a page in WordPress:
- After installing and activating the plugin, go to the All Pages or All Posts menu in your WordPress dashboard, depending on what you want to duplicate.
- Hover over the post or page you want to clone and click Duplicate.
- The cloned post or page will appear as a new draft with the same name as the original. Open the copy to edit the content.
3. Post Duplicator
The Post Duplicator plugin allows you to create an exact replica of a post or page in WordPress while retaining the custom fields and custom taxonomies as well.
Here’s how to duplicate a page or post using Post Duplicator plugin:
- Install and activate the Post Duplicator plugin.
- Access your WordPress admin, and find the post or page you want to duplicate.
- Click Duplicate Post or Duplicate Page.
There are some settings that you can customize for duplicating posts. Go to Tools -> Post Duplicator and set the post status (draft, published, or same as the original), post type, and post date. It’s also possible to adjust the duplicate’s title and slug.
Duplicating WordPress Page or Post Without Plugins
Besides using plugins, another method to duplicate posts and pages is by adding code to your functions.php file. To activate a duplication link, you can either use an FTP client, an HTML editor, or a built-in WordPress file editor.
If you’re going with the second option, read our article to find out the best HTML editorsfor editing code.
On the other hand, if you want to use an inbuilt file editor for duplicating posts or pages in your site, navigate to Appearance in your WordPress dashboard. Go to Theme Editor and select Theme Functions.
Alternatively, you can use Hostinger’s File Manager to configure the functions.php file.
Now, let’s look at the step-by-step instructions to duplicate a page or a post in your WordPress website.
Important! We strongly recommend to back up your website before editing any WordPress files.
How to Duplicate a Post via the Functions.php File
To duplicate a post on a WordPress website, you’ll need to paste the following code snippet in your functions.php file:
/* * Function for post duplication. Dups appear as drafts. User is redirected to the edit screen */ function rd_duplicate_post_as_draft(){ global $wpdb; if (! ( isset( $_GET['post']) || isset( $_POST['post']) || ( isset($_REQUEST['action']) && 'rd_duplicate_post_as_draft' == $_REQUEST['action'] ) ) ) { wp_die('No post to duplicate has been supplied!'); } /* * Nonce verification */ if ( !isset( $_GET['duplicate_nonce'] ) || !wp_verify_nonce( $_GET['duplicate_nonce'], basename( __FILE__ ) ) ) return; /* * get the original post id */ $post_id = (isset($_GET['post']) ? absint( $_GET['post'] ) : absint( $_POST['post'] ) ); /* * and all the original post data then */ $post = get_post( $post_id ); /* * if you don't want current user to be the new post author, * then change next couple of lines to this: $new_post_author = $post->post_author; */ $current_user = wp_get_current_user(); $new_post_author = $current_user->ID; /* * if post data exists, create the post duplicate */ if (isset( $post ) && $post != null) { /* * new post data array */ $args = array( 'comment_status' => $post->comment_status, 'ping_status' => $post->ping_status, 'post_author' => $new_post_author, 'post_content' => $post->post_content, 'post_excerpt' => $post->post_excerpt, 'post_name' => $post->post_name, 'post_parent' => $post->post_parent, 'post_password' => $post->post_password, 'post_status' => 'draft', 'post_title' => $post->post_title, 'post_type' => $post->post_type, 'to_ping' => $post->to_ping, 'menu_order' => $post->menu_order ); /* * insert the post by wp_insert_post() function */ $new_post_id = wp_insert_post( $args ); /* * get all current post terms ad set them to the new post draft */ $taxonomies = get_object_taxonomies($post->post_type); // returns array of taxonomy names for post type, ex array("category", "post_tag"); foreach ($taxonomies as $taxonomy) { $post_terms = wp_get_object_terms($post_id, $taxonomy, array('fields' => 'slugs')); wp_set_object_terms($new_post_id, $post_terms, $taxonomy, false); } /* * duplicate all post meta just in two SQL queries */ $post_meta_infos = $wpdb->get_results("SELECT meta_key, meta_value FROM $wpdb->postmeta WHERE post_id=$post_id"); if (count($post_meta_infos)!=0) { $sql_query = "INSERT INTO $wpdb->postmeta (post_id, meta_key, meta_value) "; foreach ($post_meta_infos as $meta_info) { $meta_key = $meta_info->meta_key; if( $meta_key == '_wp_old_slug' ) continue; $meta_value = addslashes($meta_info->meta_value); $sql_query_sel[]= "SELECT $new_post_id, '$meta_key', '$meta_value'"; } $sql_query.= implode(" UNION ALL ", $sql_query_sel); $wpdb->query($sql_query); } /* * finally, redirect to the edit post screen for the new draft */ wp_redirect( admin_url( 'post.php?action=edit&post=' . $new_post_id ) ); exit; } else { wp_die('Post creation failed, could not find original post: ' . $post_id); } } add_action( 'admin_action_rd_duplicate_post_as_draft', 'rd_duplicate_post_as_draft' ); /* * Add the duplicate link to action list for post_row_actions */ function rd_duplicate_post_link( $actions, $post ) { if (current_user_can('edit_posts')) { $actions['duplicate'] = '<a href="' . wp_nonce_url('admin.php?action=rd_duplicate_post_as_draft&post=' . $post->ID, basename(__FILE__), 'duplicate_nonce' ) . '" title="Duplicate this item" rel="permalink">Duplicate</a>'; } return $actions; } add_filter( 'post_row_actions', 'rd_duplicate_post_link', 10, 2 );
Credit for coming up with this handy code: Misha Rudrastyh
How to Duplicate a Page in WordPress via the functions.php File
The process for duplicating a page in WordPress is pretty simple. All you have to do is replace the last line of the code above with the following snippet:
add_filter('page_row_actions', 'rd_duplicate_post_link', 10, 2);
Once you have successfully embedded the code above, you should see a Duplicate button in All Posts or All Pages menu.
Conclusion
We hope you find the tutorial and all the tools we recommend in the article helpful to duplicate a page or a post in WordPress.
Duplicating a page or a post in WordPress can be useful in so many ways. Perhaps you want to duplicate your current page for future website design references. Or, you might need to duplicate an existing post to reuse it as a template.
While you can duplicate a page or a post manually with a copy and paste, it can be a hassle if you handle a lot of content.
First, you can duplicate a post or page in WordPress using a plugin. For this purpose, there are three different plugins you can choose: Duplicate Post, Duplicate Page and Post, and Post Duplicator.
Second, you can duplicate posts and pages without a plugin. All you need to do is access the functions.php file in WordPress, then enter the code that we’ve provided. Doing this will generate a duplicate link to each post and page in the WordPress admin.
Do you have any questions, tips, or tricks for duplicating a page or a post in WordPress? Let us know in the comment section below!
Learn What Else You Can Do With WordPress
How to Install WordPress
What Is a Permalink in WordPress
How to Create a Contact Form in WordPress
How to Edit Footer in WordPress
How to Update WordPress
How to Change WordPress Domain Name
Comments
October 24 2017
Hmm but anyway you use code, it is same like plugin right? I found one got no database settings, seems also fast, can you recommend?? https://wordpress.org/plugins/duplicate-post-littlebizzy/
November 06 2017
Hi, good good tutorial. Is possibile create duplicated post into other database? I have two wordpress, with two different database . Fist wordpress is for staging, second is for production. This solution is very useful to create a new post in staging and create it in production env. Thanks.
March 16 2018
Works fine but only for post or page, i have done a simple plugin to create custom post...where ve i to change? Thx
March 23 2018
Hi Emanuele, What exactly do yo want to duplicate?
April 28 2018
Good tutorial for copy page because sometime it need to clone same layout from one page to another and it will very helpful for it and also able to copy page layout via making it duplicate thanks for informative article
September 09 2018
Thank you for the php code. Worked a treat!
October 17 2018
Thank you. Great piece of code. :)
July 03 2019
Thank You this code is great and I have been using it for quite some time. I would like to add one minor change since Gutenberg and advanced custom fields threw a wrench into it. Simply wrapping addslashes() around $post->post_content will fix any issues that occur.
September 24 2019
Hey Doug, Thanks for a great tip!
February 11 2019
Thank you so much for this! The code works like a charm! Nicely explained, great options for people who'd want to go the plugin way as well.
June 02 2019
Thanks for the great post. Has anyone written a script for cloning a hierarchy of pages? So it would clone all nested children in addition to the parent page?
September 03 2019
Hello Plugin WPBE - WordPress Posts Bulk Editor Professional has duplication functionality for all post types, and its possible duplicate not only for one time the same post but for many times
October 16 2019
Thank you. Great piece of code. 🙂
December 30 2019
Its really needed post and I found it on your site, I think you are very co operative to your customer. Thanks again.
January 29 2020
Hey Adrina, Happy to hear that it helped.
January 08 2020
Thanks for the great post. There's a lot of nice information. Also, I want to mention another nice plugin for duplicating posts/pages - https://wordpress.org/plugins/duplicate-page-or-post/
February 06 2020
Worked like a charm. I copied your code snippet into my child theme's functions, changed it to work for pages and wham! Thank you :)
February 17 2020
Hey man, your code is better than any duplicating plugins. Congratulations!
August 03 2020
Hi, Thank you so much. worked :)
August 04 2020
Besides using plugins, you can also tweak some codes to duplicate WordPress pages and posts. While this method sounds like a bother, it is actually quite simple.
August 18 2020
I'm far from being a geek. I'm in the IT since 1978... (70). Retired and UML2 teacher. I tried to include the snippet code into functions.php but it has apparently no effect. Could I mail to you 3 screen copies to find out what I missed ? Anyway many tks in advance. (Can you send me a mail address pls?)
November 06 2020
Hey there Alain! Of course you can email us the screen cap copies. Just login to your Hostinger account and you can reach our Customer Success team that works 24/7! :)
September 16 2020
Thanks for this! I tried putting this into my functions.php file, but the Duplicate link is not showing up on my posts as it is in your example. Do you know if this works with the latest WP versions?
November 18 2020
Hey Daniel. It should work with all the WP versions, yes. Make sure you put it within the frames of the functions.php, and you aren't out of the last closed bracket of the code. If you still struggle, just drop a line to our Customer Success team and we will help you out! :)
November 08 2020
Thanks for the code. Works flawless!
December 07 2020
Nice! It worked :) Now, I want to be able to duplicate both: pages and posts. What should I do? Thanks!
February 09 2021
Hi, Mila! If you use the second plugin (Duplicate Page and Post), that should allow you to duplicate both your pages and posts :)
January 31 2022
Thanks a lot!! I used the php snippet and it appears to work, but not with elementor. I am no longer able to edit any pages with elementor (including non-duplicated pages). Any idea if there is a fix or if it is some kind of paywall to encourage purchasing elementor pro?
February 04 2022
Hi Emma! It looks like Elementor has a special feature for page duplication, so I'd suggest to disable the PHP method and try out their way. Let us know how it goes for you!
May 11 2022
Hello guys, First thank you so much for the code, which is working perfectly. I wanted to know if there is a way to add the option [Duplicate Post/Page] in the dropdown of Edit Post, just like the plugin offers [in the admin toolbar] Thanks a lot once again.
May 12 2022
Hi! It would be possible, however, you'd need to manually alter the code, so if you're looking for the same functionality - installing a plugin is probably easier :)