“New changes in WordPress” keeps coming back

A document keeps showing New changes in WordPress in the editor’s WP tab, or the WordPress update pill in the document list, even straight after you pull. Older versions of these docs called this state “WordPress is newer”. It is not a fault in the status: something on your site keeps updating the post.

Before you start: you need wp-admin access to the site’s plugins, and ideally a staging copy of the site to test on.

Why the status comes back

Workover records the post’s modification time every time you push or pull. When WordPress later reports a modification time newer than that, the post is flagged as changed. If the flag returns right after a pull, the post’s modification time keeps moving.

The editor’s WP tab checks the live post. The document list does not: it reads the result of a background check, so its pill can lag. For the full model, see Sync status and conflicts.

What moves the modification time

WordPress updates a post’s modification time when the post itself is re-saved, not when a plugin only writes post meta. Things that can re-save a post automatically include:

• SEO plugins that re-save posts, for example after recalculating something on a schedule.
• Cache and optimization plugins that rewrite post content.
• Image optimizers that update the posts that reference an image.
• Related-post and internal-linking plugins that insert links into content.
• Scheduled jobs on wp_cron that call wp_update_post.
• Another integration that updates the same post through the WordPress REST API.

Find what is re-saving the post

1. Pull the document. The WP tab does not re-check WordPress while it stays open, so reload the document from time to time. When the status shows New changes in WordPress again, the line under it reads “Edited in WordPress … · you synced …”. Note the edit time and compare it with scheduled tasks on your site.
2. Open the post in wp-admin and compare its content with the document. If nothing differs, only the modification time moved. WordPress saves a revision only when the title, content or excerpt changes, so a re-save that changes nothing may leave no revision to inspect.
3. On a staging copy of the site, deactivate plugins in halves until the status stops coming back. The last half you turned off contains the plugin responsible.

Fix it

If the plugin genuinely changes the published content, treat WordPress as the source for that post: pull before every push, so you push on top of the plugin’s changes rather than over them.

If only the modification time moves, you can push over it.

Warning: Overwrite anyway replaces whatever is on WordPress with your version. Use it only after you have confirmed in step 2 that the WordPress content matches your document.

When you press Push, the Before you push… dialog appears; select Overwrite anyway.

If the plugin behavior is optional, turn it off. A plugin that re-saves every post on a schedule makes the sync status meaningless across the whole site, not just for this document.

Related

• Sync status and conflicts
• How to fix a push to WordPress that failed
• Pulling changes from WordPress
• How WordPress sync works