Duplicate widgets in WordPress

After the success of yesterday’s tutorial in which I had , many of you have asked me how to duplicate them. Let’s see how!

In many cases we have to place the same widget in several sidebars. That requires a bit of a slow and painful process, where we have to place the widget and configure it each time. In some cases it is a quick widget to configure, but in other cases we have to fill in text boxes, select options, dropdowns, images, etc.

Well, we can simplify that process in two similar but not the same ways: Duplicate the widget or create an alias.

The first form is what might be called a clone. We are basically duplicating the widget exactly as we have it. We will do this with the plugin, which when we install and configure it, we will see how a cross appears in the left corner of each widget:

So, we already have a very fast way to clone a widget without any effort. Let’s remember that the point here is that the new plugin is a clone, and as such, everything is configured exactly like the first one. It is not that it places another widget just like it, but that it clones it with all its configurations.

As I say, this is fine if you want to put the same widget elsewhere, but let’s note that from now on each version of the widget will “go on its own”. In other words, we can now enter any of the two, modify it, and they will no longer be the same. Well, like the twins, each one has her life.

Let us now see a different and very interesting approach. Create an alias.

Create widget aliases in WordPress

Although the end result may be very similar, creating an alias is a bit different than duplicating a widget. What we will do in this case is install and activate the plugin, which in this case, what it will do is create a new widget called precisely Widget Alias:

This widget is very special, because it does nothing by itself, but it is capable of taking the form of any other widget that we have active. So, if we place it in a widget area, we will see that we can select “which widget we want to clone” from a dropdown:

As we can see in the image, in the dropdown we can choose any of the other three widgets that we have active. And the one we choose will be the “cloned” widget in that place. Let’s note that if we want, we can optionally modify the title of the “alias”, to put what we want.

Also, not to get confused, the plugin adds a blue stripe to all widgets with an identifier, so we can choose exactly the one we want.

Attention with the difference between this plugin and duplicate: In this case, the plugin is creating an alias, which it will be modified automatically if the original plugin is modified. In other words, if we clone a widget that has certain configurations, and then modify those configurations in the original widget, the “alias”, as such, will also reflect those changes, since it has no “life of its own”, it is only a “reflection” of the first.

This will be useful in the case that we need to place the same plugin in several widget areas, but we want it to ALWAYS be exactly the same, so that if we modify something in one, we don’t have to modify them all each time.

By the way, for the most curious… yes. “Aliases” can be made of “alias”. You may break the space-time continuum, but you can. 😉

conclusion

A couple of very interesting plugins that save us a lot of time. And you already know that time is gold, so I highly recommend them. Choose the one you consider appropriate according to each case, and if you have any doubts or questions, you can send it to me through , and I will be happy to answer you personally. 🙂

And if you want to know more about plugins like these, don’t hesitate. Subscribe to them and you will save much more time and gold! 🙂