🔍 What Is This Error?

When you attempt to sync content to your WordPress site through Search Atlas, you may see a message stating "No WordPress website found" even though the Search Atlas WordPress plugin is installed and active. This false detection error can also cause your PR Distribution job to stall at 50% progress.

This is a known issue currently being resolved by our engineering team. In the meantime, follow the steps below to get your sync working again.

✅ Step 1: Verify the Plugin Is Installed and Active

1. Log in to your WordPress admin dashboard.
2. Navigate to Plugins → Installed Plugins.
3. Confirm the Search Atlas plugin is listed and its status shows Active.
4. If the plugin is deactivated, click Activate and wait a few seconds before retrying the sync.

🔑 Step 2: Re-Authenticate the Plugin

Authentication issues between the plugin and your Search Atlas account are a common cause of false detection errors. Follow these steps to refresh the connection:

1. Inside your WordPress admin, open the Search Atlas plugin settings page.
2. Disconnect and then reconnect your Search Atlas account by re-entering your API credentials or re-authorising via the provided login flow.
3. Save the settings and confirm the plugin shows a connected status.

⚙️ Step 3: Retry the CMS Sync in Search Atlas

1. Go to OTTO SEO → SEO Automation (All Sites) in the left sidebar (or navigate to /seo-automation-v3).
2. Locate the page or task where the sync failed.
3. Toggle Sync to CMS off, wait five seconds, then toggle it back on.
4. Monitor the progress indicator. The sync should now advance past the point where it previously stalled.

📋 Step 4: Check for PR Distribution Job Stalls

If your PR Distribution job is stuck at 50% progress, this is directly linked to the CMS sync failure. Once the sync error is resolved using the steps above, the job should resume automatically. If it does not resume within a few minutes:

• Refresh the page and check the job status again.
• If the job remains at 50%, cancel it, resolve the sync issue first, and then resubmit the PR Distribution job.

🚫 Common Mistakes to Avoid

• Do not install duplicate versions of the Search Atlas plugin — remove any older copies before reinstalling.
• Do not use a caching plugin that may block the plugin's authentication requests. Temporarily disable caching and retry if issues persist.
• Ensure your WordPress site is publicly accessible and not in maintenance mode, as Search Atlas cannot detect a site that is offline or behind a maintenance screen.
• Confirm your WordPress site URL in Search Atlas exactly matches your actual site URL, including whether it uses www or not, and http vs https.

💡 Why Does This Happen?

The false detection error occurs when Search Atlas is unable to receive a valid response from your WordPress plugin during the connection check. This can be caused by plugin authentication timeouts, URL mismatches, server configuration issues, or a temporary bug in the sync process. Our team has already shipped fixes for several cases of this error, and further improvements are in active development.

🆘 Still Seeing the Error?

If you have followed all the steps above and the CMS sync still fails, our team can investigate your specific site configuration directly. If you need further assistance, open the chat widget in the bottom-right corner of the platform and type human teammate to be connected with a member of our team.

When you reach out, please have the following ready to speed up the investigation:

• Your WordPress site URL as entered in Search Atlas
• A screenshot of the error message and the plugin settings page
• The name of any caching or security plugins active on your site