Yoast Duplicate Post Not Deleting Drafts Upon Punlish

Hello,

Thanks for reaching out.

By design and as included in the documentation, when you click the Rewrite & Republish button, your duplicated post will be merged into the original post, automatically deleting the duplicated version and updating the original post. But you mentioned this is not the case for you.

We suspect that after rewriting, you got an alert, “Do you want to double-check your changes before merging?” in the pre-publishing sidebar which then takes you to the “Compare changes” screen. On this screen, you can compare the changes you just made with the original (live) post. This leaves your post in draft.

If you do not want to review when you are done rewriting, proceed to click “Repblish” in the sidebar instead of the “Save changes and Compare” button. See an annotated image.

We hope this works for you.

Hi Maybellyne,

That’s not the case for us, we’re using it as you suggested in the documentation and your email:
1. Select Rewrite & Republish
2. Update the working Draft
3. Select Republish
4. The Draft post remains

When I change our process to include the Compare step, we do not see the “Do you want to double-check your changes before merging?” alert.

Interestingly, when we Rewrite & Republish a post that’s already been updated using Rewrite & Republish to create a 2nd or 3rd version of the original post, we see a new Draft post created and that new Draft is successfully deleted on Republish….but the original Draft still remains.

So, we can see that the Delete function is working for 2nd and 3rd Drafts, but the original Draft is never deleted for us.

Also, I don’t think this would make any difference, but I noticed your screenshots are from the new Block Editor and we’re using Classic for the posts on which we’ve used Rewrite & Republish so far.

LMK if you need any additional info or if that will be sufficient for you to resolve this issue.

Hi @jsncam

We don’t believe that using the Classic Editor plugin would affect the functionality of the Duplicate Post plugin.

We tried it on a test site using Troubleshooting Mode in the Health Check & Troubleshooting plugin, with a default WP Twenty Twenty theme, and only Classic Editor v1.6 and Yoast Duplicate Post v4.1.2 as the only plugins enabled.

We then clicked on ‘Rewrite & Republish’ on an already published post, and it created a draft “Draft, Rewrite & Republish of Post” which we then made changes to, and then clicked on the ‘Republish’ button. Once we did so, the draft no longer appeared in the posts overview, and we received a notification “Your original post has been replaced with the rewritten post. You are now viewing the (rewritten) original post.” so on a default set-up, it is working as expected.

When you click on the ‘Republish’ button, do you also get the notification that “Your original post has been replaced with the rewritten post. You are now viewing the (rewritten) original post.”? When you check on the draft that remains in the Posts overview page, does it show the “Draft, Rewrite & Republish of Post A” when you hover over it?

Seeing as we are unable to replicate the issue with a default set-up, there might be a conflict with one of the plugins or themes on your website. Would it be possible for you to perform a conflict check so we can rule out any plugin or theme conflicts? You can refer to this article for more information — https://yoast.com/help/how-to-check-for-plugin-conflicts/ (activating Yoast Duplicate Post plugin instead of Yoast SEO)