Duplicate Posts and Pages in WordPress (Page Builders Too)

The first time I needed ten near-identical landing pages, I did it the manual way: build one, then copy the Elementor layout into the next, and the next. Two pages in, a meta field didn’t carry across and the third opened as a blank white canvas in the builder. Duplicating content in WordPress looks trivial and absolutely isn’t—because a post is far more than the text you see. Here’s how to clone anything, layout and all, in one click.

The essentials

• Core WordPress has no built-in duplicate button—you need a tool for it.
• The Content Duplicator clones content, custom fields, taxonomies, template, menu order and hierarchy in one click.
• Page-builder layouts survive because it copies every post-meta row directly at the database level, preserving exact encoding—no builder-specific integration required.
• Copies are made as a draft by default, so nothing goes live by accident.
• Duplicate from the posts list, in bulk, from the admin bar, and even duplicate taxonomy terms (categories, tags, custom).

Why is duplicating WordPress content harder than it looks?

Because a post is not just a title and a body. Underneath, it carries:

• Custom fields (post meta) — often dozens of them, especially with a page builder or ACF.
• Taxonomies — categories, tags and any custom taxonomies.
• A parent-child hierarchy and menu order — particularly for pages.
• A page template assignment.
• Optionally comments and other attached data.

Page builders like Elementor, Divi and Beaver Builder store their entire layout inside post meta. If those meta fields aren’t copied byte-for-byte, with the exact serialization intact, the “copy” opens as an empty page in the builder. That single detail is why a naive copy-paste—or a cheap duplicator that copies the post but mangles the meta—fails.

How do you duplicate a post or page in WordPress?

Core WordPress has no duplicate button, so you add one. Activate the Content Duplicator module in Blaminhor Essentials and a one-click Duplicate action appears across your admin, cloning the whole post—content, custom fields, taxonomies, template and page-builder layout—straight to a safe draft. That action shows up everywhere you actually work:

• In the posts and pages list, next to Edit, Trash and View.
• In the bulk-actions menu, to clone several items at once.
• In the admin bar while viewing a post on the front end.
• In the taxonomy list, to duplicate a category, tag or custom term.

Click it, and the module builds a complete clone.

Pick what’s duplicable and how copies are labelled once—then it’s a single click from every list afterward.

What exactly gets copied?

With the defaults, effectively everything that defines the post:

• All content and the excerpt.
• Every custom field, read straight from wp_postmeta and re-inserted at the database level so the encoding is preserved exactly—this is what keeps page-builder layouts working.
• All taxonomies — categories, tags and custom taxonomies.
• Template, menu order and hierarchy.
• Page-builder data — Elementor, Divi, Beaver Builder and anything else that lives in post meta, for free, because the meta is copied wholesale.

Two things are optional and off by default, because they’re not always what you want: copying the post’s child posts (for hierarchical content) and copying its comments. Turn either on in the settings when you need it.

At a glance, here’s what a clone carries over:

Element	Copied when you duplicate?
Content and excerpt	Yes, always
Custom fields (post meta)	Yes—copied at database level, encoding intact
Taxonomies (categories, tags, custom)	Yes, always
Template, menu order, hierarchy	Yes, always
Page-builder layout (Elementor, Divi, Beaver Builder)	Yes—because the meta is copied wholesale
Child posts (hierarchical content)	Optional—off by default
Comments	Optional—off by default

Can you make the duplicate behave the way you want?

Yes—the settings are where you tune the workflow rather than fight it:

• Default status of new copies — draft out of the box, so nothing publishes by accident. Change it to published or private if that fits your flow.
• Title suffix / prefix — copies get ” - copy” appended by default, so you never confuse a clone with the original in a list.
• Date and author — by default a copy takes the current date (not the original’s) and keeps the author; both are configurable.
• Eligible post types and taxonomies — decide exactly what can be duplicated, custom post types included.

The result

A pixel-perfect second copy, ready to edit, with every layout, field and taxonomy intact—no blank builder pages, no missing meta, no encoding surprises. What was an afternoon of rebuilding becomes a click.

If you’re duplicating pages to organise a lot of content, you’ll probably want to arrange it afterward too—reordering posts and pages by drag-and-drop pairs naturally with this.

Content Duplicator is one of the 20+ tools in Blaminhor Essentials—free and open-source on WordPress.org.

Download Blaminhor Essentials

– blaminhor