Allow republishing/replacing of existing posts

We have this recurring scenario where editors will clone or add a new post/page…etc instead of using the Rewrite & Republish feature. They then request for the new/cloned item to replace an existing/old one.

I’ve solved this internally by creating a plugin utilising the Yoast Duplicate Post functionality. However, it would be great if this functionality shipped with the official plugin.

You can see a demo of my solution here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3etzPURQ3o

My solution adds a metabox where editors can select the post they want to replace. On post save it adds all the necessary _dp_* metadata to both the current and target posts. At this point, the Yoast Duplicate Post takes over and handles it like a regular Rewrite & Republish item I’ve just added an extra metabox to give a more visual representation of what’s happening and an option to cancel the process (this just removes the metadata added in the previous step).

Start by reviewing the existing Rewrite & Republish flow and the proposed replacement metabox and post-save behavior described in the issue. Compare the demo and the existing Yoast Duplicate Post handling, then define completion as allowing an editor to select an existing post, replace it through the normal flow, and cancel the process cleanly.