How to fix a push to WordPress that failed

When you press Push in the editor’s WP tab and the post does not update, Workover tells you why: a disabled button, a dialog, or a red error box. Find what you see below and follow its steps. In the quoted messages, … stands for a part that varies, such as your site’s address or a number.

Before you start: the document must already be linked to a WordPress post, and its project connected to the site. For a first publish, see How to push a document to WordPress.

The Push button is disabled

A document with pending suggestions cannot be pushed. The WP tab shows a yellow warning under the buttons: “… unresolved suggestions, accept or reject them first. Publishing now would put the tracked changes, including the replaced text, on the live site.” Hovering Push shows “Resolve the pending suggestions before pushing”.

Open the document’s suggestions.
Accept or reject each one.
Press Push again.

The block exists because suggestion markup, both the struck-through original and the proposed replacement, would otherwise ship to the live post. See Comments and suggestions.

A “Before you push…” dialog appears

Workover stopped the push before changing anything in WordPress. The dialog shows one or both of the warnings below.

“This post was changed in WordPress since your last sync”

Someone, or something, edited the post in WordPress after your last pull or push. You can often see this coming: the sync status in the WP tab reads New changes in WordPress, with a line reading “Edited in WordPress … · you synced …”, and a warning that “Pushing now overwrites the WordPress changes. Pull first to review them.”

To keep the WordPress edit:

In the dialog, select Pull latest from WordPress first.
In Pull the latest version from WordPress?, select Pull latest. This replaces the document body and fields in Workover with the WordPress version, discarding any un-pushed changes.
Review what changed, reapply your own edits if they still apply, then press Push.

To replace the WordPress edit with your version instead:

Warning: Overwrite anyway replaces whatever changed in WordPress. You cannot undo it from Workover. Use it only when you have checked that the WordPress edit does not matter.

In the dialog, select Overwrite anyway.

Select Cancel to back out without changing anything.

“Pushing would remove … that exists on WordPress but isn’t editable here”

The live post has more embedded videos or other iframe embeds than the version you are pushing, and the dialog names how many, for example “2 embedded videos/media”. Pushing would delete them from the post.

If the post was not also changed in WordPress, the dialog offers only Overwrite anyway and Cancel. If both warnings apply, it shows both, plus Pull latest from WordPress first.

To keep the embeds:

Select Cancel.
If the WP tab offers the Edit in the WordPress block editor checkbox, turn it on. That surface keeps blocks exactly as WordPress stores them, and a push from it skips this check. See Custom blocks and ACF fields.
Otherwise, make the change directly in WordPress.

Warning: Overwrite anyway deletes the listed embeds from the live post.

A dialog says a link points at a document that isn’t live

The dialog is titled “One link points at a document that isn’t live”, or “… links point at documents that aren’t live”, and lists the linked Workover documents.

Select Publish without that link (or Publish without those links). The link is removed and its text stays. Nothing on WordPress is lost, and the link comes back automatically the next time you push after that document goes live.
Or select Cancel, publish the linked documents first, then push again.

When offered, Keep the workover.io links anyway publishes the raw Workover links instead. Readers who aren’t signed in to your workspace get a 404, so use it only for an internal audience. See Sync status and conflicts.

A red box says “WordPress did not accept this”

The push reached WordPress, or tried to, and failed. The message in the box names the cause.

Message starts with	What happened	What to do
“… refused the connection. The application password no longer works.”	The password was rotated, deleted or expired.	Reconnect the site to issue a fresh password. See Connecting your WordPress site.
“… refused the connection. Application passwords are switched off for this site or for this user…”	Application passwords were turned off, usually by a security plugin or host setting.	Turn them back on in WordPress. See Application passwords not available.
“… refused the connection. The connected WordPress account signed in, but no longer has permission…”	The connected WordPress user’s role cannot edit or publish this post.	Reconnect with an account that has those permissions, or change the user’s role in WordPress.
“… refused the connection (HTTP …). WordPress did not say why…” (a status of 401 or 403)	The password stopped working, a security plugin is blocking Workover, or the host strips the authorization header.	Reconnect the site first. If that does not fix it, see reaching a site behind a firewall or Cloudflare Access.
“… has no post at that address any more.”	The linked post was probably deleted in WordPress. When WordPress explains this itself, you see “WordPress rejected the push: …” instead.	As the message says, disconnect and reconnect the document to link it to a post that exists.
“… answered …. That is the site erroring rather than Workover…” (a status of 500 or higher)	The site returned a server error.	Retry in a few minutes. If it persists, check the site’s error log.
“WordPress rejected the push: …”	WordPress refused the content, for example a bad category ID or a slug clash.	Read WordPress’s reason after the colon and fix that field.
“… rejected the request (HTTP …).”	WordPress refused the request without giving a reason.	Try again, then contact support.
“This document is linked to a post on …, and this project is now connected to ….”	The project was pointed at a different site after the document was linked.	Link the document to a post on the new site, or connect the project back to its original site.
“WordPress credentials are not available”	Workover has no usable stored login for this site.	Reconnect the site.
“The push did not go through, and WordPress did not say why.”	No reason came back.	Try again, then contact support.

For what each message means in more detail, see Common errors.

Confirm the push worked

A successful push shows “✓ Pushed to WordPress. Your staged edits are now live on the post.” under the buttons, and the sync status changes to Up to date with WordPress.

Pushing from the CLI or MCP

A push made with a CLI or MCP token can never overwrite a WordPress edit. If the post changed in WordPress, the push is refused, and someone needs to resolve it in the browser with the steps above. See The CLI and MCP server.