Operate and monitor LotPress Sync

Approve the first import

1. Back up the database and uploads.
2. Save permanent identity, parser, mapping, photo, and missing-vehicle settings.
3. Preview the sample and production feed.
4. Resolve duplicate IDs and unexpected rejections.
5. Confirm creates and inspect normalized values.
6. Import manually while the site is monitored.
7. Inspect representative pages and wait for photos.
8. Preview again; established records should normally be unchanged unless the feed changed.

Keep a first synchronous web import at or below 1,000 vehicles on ordinary 60-second hosting.

Use preview as the approval gate

• Creates: only genuinely new source identities.
• Updates: explainable provider or mapping changes.
• Unchanged: normally the majority on a stable feed.
• Rejections: understood and corrected before automation.
• Missing: consistent with actual departures and the selected policy.

Stop if a routine feed recreates the inventory, drops sharply, rejects many records, or reports unexpected missing vehicles.

Make scheduling reliable

Enable hourly operation only after a successful manual run. WordPress schedules lotpress_sync_scheduled_run through WP-Cron. Low-traffic production sites should use a real system scheduler to run due WordPress events.

An atomic lock prevents overlapping runs and expires after 30 minutes after interruption. Do not start repeated manual imports while a slow run is still active.

Monitor photos and routine runs

The background worker handles three vehicles per invocation and retries failed downloads up to three times. Review queued, processing, complete, partial, failed, and waiting-empty states. Confirm cron runs, uploads are writable, and image hosts remain reachable.

Check the latest success time, received and valid counts, rejections, missing counts, authentication errors, and representative storefront pages. Sync retains the latest 20 summaries but not raw feeds or Authorization headers.

Handle provider changes safely

1. Disable scheduling.
2. Obtain a new sample and change notice.
3. Back up the site and export the current preset.
4. Update connection or mappings without changing Source identifier unless this is deliberately a new feed.
5. Preview and reconcile every count difference.
6. Run one monitored import and inspect photos.
7. Re-enable scheduling only after approval.