Preview and review
- Save the connection, parser, mapping, and safety settings.
- Choose Preview for the remote feed, or upload the file and choose Preview uploaded file.
- Confirm the received and valid counts.
- Review creates, updates, unchanged vehicles, rejections, and missing vehicles.
- Investigate unexpected count drops or duplicate external IDs before importing.
A preview never changes inventory or advances the previous-successful-feed count.
Choose missing-vehicle behavior
- Mark Sold: keep the vehicle published but remove it from the normal available storefront.
- Move to Trash: remove it from the storefront while retaining a recoverable record and photos.
- Do nothing: leave missing vehicles unchanged; use this for intentionally partial or filtered files.
The feed-count safety threshold blocks a suspiciously small successful feed before missing-vehicle actions run. Do not bypass the warning until the source file has been verified.
Schedule imports and monitor photos
Enable hourly scheduling only after a manual import has produced the expected inventory. WordPress schedules the feed import through WP-Cron. Feed photos are then downloaded asynchronously into the Media Library; the first usable image becomes featured and the remainder populate the LotPress gallery in source order.
Check recent run summaries after provider changes. Mapped feed fields remain authoritative on every successful sync, while unchanged photo URLs are not downloaded again and manually added images are preserved.
Troubleshoot safely
- Authentication or download failure: re-test the saved URL or SFTP connection and confirm the remote path, credentials, and host key.
- XML failure: confirm XMLReader and SimpleXML are installed and the repeating vehicle element is correct.
- Duplicate IDs: correct the provider data or External ID mapping; Sync rejects ambiguous records.
- Unexpected missing vehicles: stop and compare the file count and Source identifier with the last successful run.
- Photos still pending: confirm WP-Cron runs and WordPress can reach the image hosts.