Copy a WordPress Post, Edit it, and then Publish the Update
Are you nervous about making changes to content that's live on your site?
Then I have good news. It is possible to copy any post that's live on your site and work on it safely – in your own little sandbox.
With the PublishPress Revisions plugin, you can work on updates to any existing post. You can make a copy of a post, edit it as many times as you like, and then replace the original post.
This is a big improvement on the default WordPress options. Using basic WordPress, you must either edit the post while it's live on your site, or create a whole new post and copy-paste the content.
This tutorial will show you how the process works with PublishPress Revisions.
- Install the PublishPress Revisions plugin on your site. The Free version supports the WordPress core and the Pro version supports extra plugins such as Advanced Custom Fields and WooCommerce.
- Edit a post that is published.
- Check the “Pending Revision” box in the top-right corner.
- Click the “Save Revision” button. This will save a copy of your post as a revision.
- Click “Revision Queue”. This screen shows all the revisions that have been saved for editing.
- Click the “Edit” link under your revision:
- You can now make changes to your revision.
- When you are ready to save your changes, click the “Update Revision” button.
None of the changes you save will automatically go live on the site. This revision is a safe space to work on updating your content.
If you want to see what your changes look like before you publish them, click the “Preview” link. You can also create a public preview of your work to share.
When you are ready to publish your changes, click the “Approve Revision” link. Your changes will be automatically merged into the published post.
It's worth noting that you don't have to publish your updates automatically. You can also schedule your revision to go live in the future. This change will update the Last Modified Date of your post.
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Josh Lewis
Queue’s ability to allow members to edit their revisions without publishing is one of my favorite features of Revisions Pro. Being able to make copy’s is a bonus. Standard WordPress behavior when setting a post to draft is to automatically set the status to publish when editing the post (unless explicitly re-selected). Most users would miss that; hence removing some of the basic convenience of WP drafts. Revisions Pro solves this.