Troubleshooting & FAQ

Loading the CMS

“Unknown site_id” — turbo_site_id doesn’t match a site in your organization. Check it against the Overview tab; it’s easy to copy the wrong one when you manage several.

“This site has been locked” — the organization is over its site limit, usually after a downgrade or cancellation. Upgrade, or unlock the site if you have a free slot. See site locking.

“This organization has hit its daily GitHub request limit” (or GitLab) — you’ve used the plan’s daily ceiling. The response carries Retry-After; the counter resets on a 24-hour boundary. Nothing is charged or locked. Tell us if you hit it during ordinary editorial work.

“The Decap Turbo GitHub App cannot see owner/repo” — either the repo on the site’s Overview tab isn’t the exact owner/name (copy it from the repository’s URL), or the App is installed on a different account than the one that owns the repo, or without that repo selected. Check under Settings → Applications → Decap Turbo → Configure on GitHub. “Connected” on the Git connection page only means an installation is linked, not that it covers your repo.

requested repo does not match — the repo in config.yml disagrees with the site row, and the site row is authoritative. Change it in the dashboard; see repo and branch.

use_graphql: true throws — on both turbo-github and turbo-gitlab. GraphQL requests would bypass per-site scoping, so the backend refuses to start. Remove it; the plain github and gitlab backends support it, the Turbo backends don’t.

Logging in

The popup closes and nothing happens / “origin not allowed” — the CMS is served from an origin (protocol, host and port) that none of the site’s admin interface URLs match, or you aren’t a member of that site. Check the Overview tab, including staging domains, and use a wildcard for deploy previews — see Admin URLs, deploy previews and branch deploys.

“Session expired. Please log in again.” — the refresh token expired or was invalidated. Log in again. A brief pause with no error is a refresh retry succeeding in the background, not a problem.

Managing organizations and sites

“Only organization owners can create new sites” — ask an owner to create it, or to promote you.

“This organization has no GitHub connection yet” — connect the provider before creating sites. See Connect your Git provider.

“This organization has reached its site limit” / “…seat limit” — free up a slot, or add capacity from Billing.

Editors are never told when a change is live

Deploy status needs something reporting your builds. Most hosts do it through the Decap GitHub App; Netlify doesn’t, for branch or production deploys, and no Netlify setting changes that. Open the site’s Deploys tab — if nothing is recorded, add the webhook. Other causes are in Deploy status.

Reporting a bug

Organization owners can report issues from the Feedback page — bugs and feature requests about Turbo itself, not your site’s content. A duplicate is added as a comment on the existing report rather than opening a second one, and you can follow status and reply from the same page.

FAQ

Does Turbo change how my content is stored? No. Content is committed to your repository exactly as the standard backends do. See How it works.

Can I move off Turbo later? Yes — your content is already in Git, so switching to the plain GitHub or GitLab backend is a config.yml change.

Can I self-host instead? Yes. Decap CMS is free and open source either way; self-hosting means running your own auth — a Git provider’s OAuth, Git Gateway, or decap-proxy — instead of Turbo’s hosted auth and proxy.

Do editors need GitHub or GitLab accounts? No. See How it works.

Can editors sign in with Google or GitHub? Sign-in is email and password today. Other providers are planned.

Is deploy status available on GitLab? Not yet. It’s turbo-github only.

How do I ask about Enterprise? From the plans page or your organization’s Billing page. It’s custom-quoted and handled outside self-serve checkout.