How to Duplicate a Page or Post in WordPress

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Knowing how to duplicate a page in WordPress is a handy trick! Creating a great page or post in WordPress can take minutes. Creating a spectacular post, however, takes a lot of time. You need to do your research, write insightful content, and then you need to fine-tune it to make the post uniquely yours. You have to add images, SEO elements, bullets, numbering, and headers to make the post easy-to-read, and you should add shareable social media buttons to enable readers to spread the word easily.

That’s why it’s so important to save yourself time by learning how to duplicate a page in WordPress – or indeed duplicating a post. There are several ways to do it.

1. Duplicating a Page in WordPress – Method #1: Duplicate Post Plugin

Step 1:  Installing the Plugin

The WordPress Duplicate Post plugin is a very handy tool to have on any WordPress website.  To install it, navigate to the Plugins tab in the left hand side of your WordPress dashboard. When the page opens up, click on Add New. Type Duplicate Post in the search bar, and click on Search. The Duplicate Post result should appear on the page, with an “Install Now” button underneath. Click on that, and then on OK. Follow the prompts  until you see the Activate Plugin option.

 

Step 2:  Duplicate the Post

From the dashboard, click on Posts > All posts

duplicate a post in wordpress

 

Choose the post you wish to duplicate from the posts listing and place your cursor underneath the name of the post. A menu with options will appear.

Two options are available:

duplicate a page in wordpress

a) Click on Clone if you want to copy the page or post without opening it.

b) Click on New Draft if you want to copy the page or post and open it in the Editor window in draft mode.

 

2. Duplicating a Page in WordPress – Method #2: Using Visual Composer

If you use Visual Composer duplicating a WordPress page or post couldn’t be easier.

Simply design your page layout, then from the template menu, select “Save current page as a template” and give the template a name.

 

visual composer duplicate page in wordpress

 

Then when you create a new page, select your template from the templates menu, and it will be used on the new page.

 

3. Duplicating a Page in WordPress – Method #3: Advanced Layout Builder

Some WordPress themes have built-in page and post duplication functions.

Enfold uses the Advanced Layout Builder which makes it simple to duplicate a page or post.

If you want to clone a page you save it as a template and give the template a suitable name:

avia layout builder duplicate page

 

When you need to add a new page, click on Templates, and choose the template name you saved on the previous step and that will load the same page.

 

4. And Finally Double Check

When you are clear about how to duplicate a page in WordPress by following one of the options above, you will have duplicated an entire post or page, including the title, tags, categories, contents and more – so you won’t have to fiddle around with new formatting or the like.

It just remains for you to check the content on the page or post, change the SEO fields, update images etc and check it all for accuracy before hitting publish.

Duplicating a page in WordPress is very easy – provided you have the right tools!

If you require further help with your WordPress website or are interested in our services, please browse our website and contact us for a no obligation chat.

6 Simple Steps to Speed Up Your WordPress Site

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If you’re using a WordPress site, you have already made at least one good decision towards the online success of your business. Now you need to optimize your site’s performance to ensure that you get the best results from it, and one way to do that, is by enhancing its load speed.

A site that loads slowly, will result in poor search engine performance, reduced conversions and a loss of traffic. Research has shown a direct link between visitor retention and:

  • page speed
  • bounce rate
  • visitor retention
  • profit

Additionally, Google has acknowledged that page speed is used as a factor in rankings. Why? Because page speed affects the user experience. Users don’t want to wait more than 3 seconds for a page to be loaded, and therefore, fast pages will be ranked higher in the search results pages.

Speed Up Your WordPress Site In Six Simple Steps

1.   Choose the right host

A reliable web host that uses DNS and is configured specifically for WordPress is crucial for your site’s performance. Your site should be hosted on servers that understand WordPress.

2.  Choose the right framework

When it comes to choosing the right framework for your WordPress site, you can’t go wrong with Genesis. It is made for WordPress and it uses the latest best practices in terms of code for best functioning. Additionally, Genesis offers responsive themes, which automatically change its resolution based on the device on which it is viewed. Since a large percentage of consumers view sites on mobile, it will open your site up to a whole new market.

3.  Install a clean theme

Clean coding is key to a fast WordPress site, and that’s why you should opt for the cleanest theme you can find. You can rely on StudioPress to deliver just that, with every single theme they create.

4.  Install a caching plugin

W3 EDGE provides an awesome plugin, known as W3 Total Cache. This tool provides fragment caching support for Genesis-powered sites.  It provides increased control over granular caching and enables faster load times.

5.  Be picky about your plugins

With so many different plugins at your disposal, it is tempting to install as many as your disk space will allow, but don’t.  Stick to the basics, and keep only those plugins that you need for your site to function as it should. With that, be sure to only install plugins that are supported and that use solid, clean code.

6.  Optimise your images

Large images take longer to load, especially if you receive a lot of traffic to your site. Therefore, you should optimise your images and compressing them in order to reduce the amount of bandwidth used when they are loaded.

There are many ways to do this, including:

Photoshop – Reduce the size of your image to the exact dimensions required on your site, and choose the most appropriate format. Select low compression settings.

WP Smush.it – Another cool WordPress plugin, Smush will take all the legwork out of compressing your images.

These simple tips should help you to speed your site up significantly. You can test the speed before and after, using Pingdom.

CodeGuard WordPress Survey – Surprising Results?

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In February 2015, CodeGuard, which offers automated cloud backups, undertook a survey of 503 WordPress users – and the results may surprise you.

Website Backups – or Lack of Them

In the first instance, 22% of respondents believe that website back-up is unimportant!  And this is supported by the fact that 47% back up only every few months, and 22% users stated they did it occasionally – whatever that might mean.

Can this be right?  We can only conclude that these lucky folk have never had to run a code comparison between a live site and backup to find a hacked file, or suffered database corruption and lost everything.

Training – or Lack of It

Perhaps these sanguine individuals should be forgiven – may be this serious oversight is due to a lack of experience and training in WordPress – only 23% of users had received extensive training.  But even without training, surely firsthand experience would make these optimistic souls be a little more savvy about looking after their website – 63% confessed to having deleted files which weren’t backed up.

Plugin Update Failures

This fascinating survey also asked about problems experienced with plugin updates – 69% confirmed they had a plugin fail after an update, and an unfortunate 24% had multiple plugin failures.  Worse still, 21% of respondents have been face to face with the truly frightening WordPress “white screen of death”.

The Cost of Putting Things Right

You may find these results surprising, or you may find yourself nodding sagely having experienced some or all of these problems yourself in the past.  But with such a high proportion of WordPress users experiencing technical issues, why aren’t people taking a more proactive approach to safeguarding their website?

The users surveyed clearly value their website and appreciate it lies at the heart of their business (and often the most important revenue-maker) – if things go wrong, a whopping 24% said they would pay anything to get their site restored.

A Pre-Emptive Strike

Whilst you may be happy to spend anything to get your crashed website back up and running, prevention is always better than cure.  If you’re not an expert WordPress user but the fate of your company’s website lies in your hands, you have two options:

1) get yourself trained up to expert level in WordPress as quickly as possible, learn how to do plugin updates correctly, backup regularly and never make a human error that you can’t fix otherwise you may have to use an emergency WordPress support service.

or

2) sign up for a regular WordPress maintenance plan where experts will maintain your website, back it up, monitor it for malware, carry out core system, plugin and theme updates without fuss, and be on hand to help you with any problems you encounter.

The choice is of course yours. 🙂

If you’d like to find out more about our regular WordPress maintenance plans just click here.

Codeguard infographic WordPress Survey

Installing WordPress Using cPanel

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The best and simplest way to install WordPress, is to use a host who offers a cPanel functionality.  These hosts offer the functionality needed for your site to work as it should on the WordPress framework, and as such, it is available as a cPanel addon. That makes it simple to install via your hosting panel.

To install WordPress via your hosting panel, simply log in and head to the software section, which is usually Softaculous. From there, select Blogs, and then WordPress. Then, select a username and password and follow the prompts. On completion, the system will send you an email with login instructions. It’s as simple as that, and takes only 5 minutes to install.

If you don’t have cPanel, you can still install WordPress by downloading it from WordPress.org, and uploading it to your site’s server, using an FTP program like FileZilla.

Once you have installed your WordPress software, you need to install a theme. For illustration purposes, we will discuss how to install the Genesis framework and a child theme.

1.  Buy Genesis and a Child Theme

You can buy the Genesis framework bundled with a theme from StudioPress. Upon payment, the two files will be available for download to your hard drive. Download them and save them in a folder on your computer.

2.  Install the Genesis Framework

From within your WordPress backend, navigate to Themes -> Add New Theme -> Upload.

Browse to the zip file containing the Genesis framework and select it, then click OK and Upload, within WordPress. You will be notified when it is uploaded, and you will have the option to Activate, or to go Back to Themes. Click on Back.

3.  Install the Child Theme

Repeat step 2, only this time, select the zip file containing your child theme. And, on completion of the installation, click on Activate. The child theme will now be your active theme, and you will be able to edit it using the Customize tab under Appearance.

As you can see, although the WordPress software is incredibly powerful, it is also deceptively easy to install. Need help?  Get in touch with an expert.

How to Create a New Page or Post in WordPress

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Within WordPress, the Custom Post Type editors have the same functionality for Posts and Pages, with Posts having additional fields for categories, tags and featured images and Pages having page templates. If you have several plugins, the Pages view may be somewhat cluttered, but you can use the Screen Options function to show or hide different items.

Getting to Know WordPress Editor

While the Editor is nearly exactly the same, there’s a fundamental difference between the two.

Posts: WordPress posts are listed by most recent date order on your posts page. However, sticky posts will appear at the top of the list. You can apply categories and tags to your posts to help organize them. Posts are available in the following widgets: Recent Posts, Categories, and Archives, and there are many settings to help you control how the posts are displayed.

Pages: Pages are not listed in date order, and they are static. Pages usually include Home, About, Services and Contact Us pages, which remain mostly the same all the time. Pages can be included in the Pages widget of your site’s sidebar, as well as in the navigation bar at the top of your page.

You can have an unlimited amount of pages and posts.

For the purpose of this tutorial, imagine we are adding a new Post. Here’s what you will do:

1. In your admin area, hover over the menu item Posts (either on the left, or in the top menu), and click on Add New to open the editor screen. It will then open the Editor.

WordPress Post

2. You will see the following menu (less the form buttons – those are there due to a plugin installed on our side).

WordPress Post Menu

3. Click on the kitchen sink (Toolbar Toggle) button to display more options.

WordPress Kitchen Sink

You will probably recognise many of the buttons from your word processing program and email, such as Bold, Italic, Underline, Hyperlink, undo, redo, justify, spell check, bullets and numbering.

In most cases, you have to select text before the buttons will be clickable.

For this post, we will focus on the new elements available to you in WordPress, such as Add Media, which allows you to insert images and videos. As a new user, we will assume that you don’t have a Media Library on your server yet, and that you want to insert an external image. Let’s get right to it.

Click on Add Media, and wait for the following screen to appear.

WordPress Insert Media

You can choose from the following options:

  • Insert from URL to use an image that is already on a website to which you have access. Warning: Do NOT use images that don’t belong to you!
  • Upload a file from your computer.
  • Media Library allows you to select files that are already uploaded onto your website server.

Inserting an image from URL

To insert an image from URL, you need to first obtain the image URL. Right-click on the image you want to insert and select Copy Image URL.

Insert Image From URL

Now head over to your WordPress post, and right click on the Insert URL field and click Paste. The image should appear, along with fields to provide Alt Text and edit the size of your image.

Click on Insert to Post to upload the image.

Uploading an Image From Your Computer

From the Insert Media window, click on Upload Image to insert an image that is already saved on your computer. In the middle of the page, click on Select Files.

A Windows Explorer window will open, from where you can navigate and select the image you want to insert. When you have found it, select it and click on open.

Again, you will be able to insert Alt Text, change sizes and more, before clicking on Insert to Post.

Insert From Media Library

If you have images uploaded to your server, you will be able to insert images from your Media Library. In the Insert Image view, click on Media Library. A snapshot with thumbnails of your available images will appear.

Select the image you want to insert, insert the Alt Tags, change the size if you wish, and click on Insert into Post.

 

Your image will be imported into your post or post, from where you can move it into the exact position where you want it to be. It’s really that simple.

If you need WordPress Support, don’t hesitate to get in touch with WP Support Specialists.