“WordPress is newer” won’t clear

A document sits in WordPress is newer and will not clear, even straight after a pull. It is not a bug in the badge — something really is rewriting the post.

How the badge is decided

Workover records the post’s modification time whenever it pushes or pulls, then re-checks periodically and when you open the project. If WordPress reports a newer time than the one recorded, the post has changed since Workover last saw it.

So a badge that reappears immediately means the modification time keeps moving.

What moves it without a human

• SEO plugins recalculating scores or writing meta on a schedule.
• Cache and optimisation plugins rewriting content to inline critical CSS, lazy-load images or rewrite URLs.
• Image optimisers replacing attachments and touching the posts referencing them.
• Related-post and internal-linking plugins injecting links into content.
• Scheduled jobs — anything running on wp_cron that calls wp_update_post.
• Another integration writing to the same post.

The tell is timing: pull, and watch how long the badge takes to come back. Seconds means something reacted to your write. Hours, and it is a scheduled job.

Finding it

1. Look at the post’s revisions in wp-admin. WordPress records who or what saved it. A revision authored by nobody, or by a plugin’s user, names the culprit.
2. Compare the content. If the stored content is identical and only the timestamp moved, it is meta-only — a plugin writing post meta, not prose. Harmless, but it still trips the check.
3. Disable plugins in halves on staging until the badge stops returning.

What to do about it

If the rewrite matters — a plugin genuinely changes the published content — treat WordPress as the source for that post and pull before each push, rather than fighting it.

If it is meta-only, which is the common case, override the conflict when you push. You are not losing anything: the content is unchanged, only the timestamp moved.

If the plugin is optional, turning off the behaviour is the real fix. An SEO plugin that rewrites every post nightly makes the sync state meaningless across the whole site, not just this document.

Related

• Sync status and conflicts
• How WordPress sync works
• Pulling changes from WordPress