WordPress admin is seeing “Submit for Review” instead of “Publish”, how do I fix that?

January 31, 2018

You log in to your WordPress site, ready to post new content and find that your publish button has been replaced by submit for review. You figure that’s fine, I’m the admin I’ll be able to review and then publish it, just an extra step. Nope. You get an error message that you can’t edit the post.

First things first, determine if it’s a plugin conflict
Move your plugins folder from wp-content, and see if the issue persists, if it does, it’s probably not a plugin.
If it doesn’t, put your r plugins folder back, deactivate all plugins, and then reactivate them one by one until you find the culprit.

It’s not a plugin conflict
If you determine it’s not a plugin related conflict, next step is to check the database. In this case, the issue is most likely in your <taple-prefix>_posts table. Using a tool like phpMyAdmin or a similar tool, select that table and click repair database. Go back to WordPress and see if the issue is resolved. In many cases, it will be resolved. If it’s not…..

Re-add Auto_Increment to the ID row 

It is probably an issue with the ID column not properly auto incrementing. Either in an update or a migration, the table got messed up. Take a backup of your database before proceeding with this. Go to your <taple-prefix>_posts table in phpMyAdmin or a similar tool, click on structure, and then find the ID row and select change. You will see a row heading of A_I, click the checkbox underneath this, and save. That should do it, go back to WordPress and post away.

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