User Handbook

This handbook provides a practical guide to using the CarSyncPro WordPress Plugin. It is intended for dealership staff, B2B customers, and anyone who interacts with the plugin on a day-to-day basis — from reviewing imported vehicles and managing leads to understanding what the frontend displays to customers.

When to use this document

Read this document if you:

• Are an administrator or editor responsible for maintaining the vehicle inventory on a WordPress site powered by this plugin.
• Need to understand what the plugin does and how its main areas work.
• Want to learn how to navigate the admin interface, monitor imports, review leads, and check the frontend.

For a deeper focus on administrative responsibilities, permissions, and system health, see the Administrator Handbook.

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Overview

CarSyncPro connects a WordPress site to a live vehicle source (the AutoScout24 API, mobile.de or carcuro) — among several data sources available on the Connections page — and imports vehicle listings as WordPress posts. It manages the full lifecycle of a vehicle listing: fetching data from the source, storing it in WordPress, displaying it on the frontend, and recording customer inquiries.

The plugin uses a dedicated custom post type (as24ci_car) and 15 vehicle-attribute taxonomies (brand, body type, fuel type, transmission, condition, and others). This makes vehicle data available through native WordPress archive pages, taxonomy pages, and shortcodes.

Imported vehicles are created as WordPress posts with status publish or draft, depending on the configured default. All associated images are downloaded and attached to the post. Vehicle metadata — price, mileage, engine specifications, equipment, and more — is stored in post meta and a dedicated database table.

The plugin adds three top-level menus to the WordPress admin sidebar, grouped together directly under the WordPress Dashboard:

• CSP Center — the main plugin workspace (Dashboard, Car Importer, Leads, Content Studio, Settings and all other tools).
• CSP Cars — the vehicle inventory itself (the as24ci_car post type), where individual vehicle records are listed, edited and published.
• CSP Team — plugin-managed dealership sales contacts that can be shown on vehicle detail pages and used to route leads.

The labels keep the fixed "CSP" brand prefix and translate only the word after it (for example "CSP Zentrale" / "CSP Fahrzeuge" / "CSP Team" in German).

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Requirements or prerequisites

Before using the plugin, the following must be in place:

• WordPress 6.2 or later and PHP 8.1 or later are required.
• The plugin must be installed and activated by a WordPress administrator.
• A data source must be connected on the Connections page. For AutoScout24 this means API credentials (API Base URL, Seller ID(s), Client ID, Client Secret, Token URL, and Audience) obtained from AutoScout24 or your integration partner; for mobile.de it means API credentials; for carcuro it means a carcuro company token. Secrets are stored encrypted at rest. Without a connected source, no vehicles can be imported.
• The WordPress site must be able to make outbound HTTPS connections to the configured API endpoint.
• For image imports, the WordPress uploads directory must be writable by the web server.

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Step-by-step instructions

Navigating to the plugin

1. Log in to the WordPress admin dashboard.
2. In the left sidebar, click CSP Center to expand the main plugin menu. (CSP Cars and CSP Team are two further top-level menus directly underneath it.)
3. The CSP Center menu contains the following items, ordered by the dealership workflow (daily operational entry points first, then business analysis, marketing and output tools, design and configuration areas, and finally technical tools, logs, system and support). The order is the same on every locale even though the visible labels are translated. For a complete screen-by-screen reference, see the Admin Reference and the Admin Menu Overview.

Optional features (AI Assistant, Content Studio, Analytics, Market Insights, Search Alerts, Locations, EnVKV / Energy, PDF Manager) only become useful once the corresponding configuration is provided; the menu entries themselves are always present. Content Studio and some operational areas may also require an active licence before they can be used.

CSP Cars and CSP Team menus

Two additional top-level menus sit directly below CSP Center:

• CSP Cars lists every imported vehicle (the as24ci_car post type). Open CSP Cars → All Cars to review, edit, publish or trash individual vehicle records. Draft vehicles are managed here, not under the standard WordPress Posts screen.
• CSP Team manages plugin-managed dealership sales contacts. You can add team members (name, photo, email, phone), set per-location and global default contacts, assign a contact to individual cars and define automatic assignment rules. The resolved contact is shown on the vehicle detail page and is used as a preferred recipient for leads. Team members never need their own WordPress login. See CSP Team and Contact Routing.

Using the Dashboard

The Dashboard tab provides a business-level overview of the vehicle inventory:

• KPI Row – displays key metrics such as total vehicles published, drafts, vehicles added in the last 7 days, and customer engagement indicators.
• Vehicle Readiness – shows completeness indicators such as vehicles missing images or short descriptions.
• Needs Attention – highlights actionable issues in the current inventory.
• Inventory Trend chart – shows new vehicles imported over time.
• Customer Interest chart – shows page views over time (requires the Analytics feature to be enabled).
• Top Performing Vehicles – lists vehicles by views or leads.
• Recent Leads – displays the latest customer inquiries received through the contact form.

Dashboard data is cached for approximately 3 minutes. Reload the page to refresh.

Using the Car Importer

The Car Importer tab shows all listings available from the connected live source (the configured AutoScout24 seller account(s), mobile.de or carcuro).

1. Navigate to CSP Center → Car Importer.
2. The page shows two tables: - Imported vehicles – listings already present in WordPress. - Pending vehicles – listings available from the API that have not yet been imported.
3. Use the search box to filter listings by make, model, or other identifiers.
4. To import a single vehicle, click the Import button next to the listing.
5. To re-import (refresh) an already-imported vehicle, click the Re-import button.
6. To remove a single vehicle from WordPress, click the Delete button. This permanently removes the post and its attached images.
7. To import or delete multiple vehicles, use the checkboxes and the bulk actions dropdown.
8. Use the Items per page control to adjust the number of listings displayed.

Running a manual full import

A manual full import (Batch-Wizard) processes all remote listings one by one:

1. Navigate to CSP Center → Import & Limits.
2. Click Start Import Now (or the equivalent button shown on that tab) to start the Batch-Wizard.
3. A progress bar shows the number of vehicles processed, the estimated remaining time, and the current status.
4. You can pause, resume, or abort the import at any time.
5. After the import completes, the status summary shows how many vehicles were added, updated, or skipped.

Reviewing leads

Leads are customer contact form submissions received through vehicle detail pages.

1. Navigate to CSP Center → Leads.
2. The leads list shows the submission date, customer name, email, phone number, message, and the vehicle the inquiry was about.
3. Each lead has a status: New, Contacted, Closed, or Spam. Change the status as you process each inquiry.
4. To export all leads (or filtered leads) to a CSV file, click the Export CSV button. The file includes a UTF-8 BOM for correct display in Microsoft Excel.
5. To delete a lead, use the delete action next to it.

Checking the frontend

After vehicles are imported, they appear on the frontend according to your WordPress permalink and template configuration:

• The vehicle archive page lists all published vehicles in a card-based grid layout with filter controls.
• Individual vehicle detail pages show the full listing: image gallery, specifications table, equipment list, description, price, contact form, financing calculator (if enabled), and test drive form (if enabled).
• The compare page (via [as24ci_compare] shortcode) allows visitors to compare selected vehicles side by side.
• The favorites page (via [as24ci_favorites] shortcode) displays vehicles a visitor has saved.

To verify the vehicle archive page:

1. From the WordPress admin, open Pages and check that the archive page exists and is published.
2. Confirm individual vehicles are published under CSP Cars → All Cars, then click View to open the frontend page and confirm vehicles are displayed.
3. If the page is empty or shows an error, check the Connections page to confirm the source is Connected (and that AutoScout24 credentials and seller IDs are correct), and check the Logs tab for import errors.

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Configuration reference

The following settings are relevant to regular users. Full configuration documentation is in the 04-admin-reference section.

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Operational notes

• Change detection: The importer stores a content hash and an image hash for each imported vehicle. During repeat imports, vehicles whose data has not changed are skipped. This keeps import runs fast.
• Full Sync: When Full Sync is enabled on the Import & Limits tab, any vehicle that is no longer present in the remote live listing (AutoScout24, mobile.de or carcuro) will be permanently deleted from WordPress, including its attached images. Enable this option only if you want local inventory to mirror the live source exactly.
• Image queue: During scheduled (cron) imports, only the first image per vehicle is downloaded immediately. Remaining images are processed asynchronously by a background queue worker. This prevents PHP execution timeout errors during large imports. The queue is processed approximately every 5 minutes.
• Draft vehicles: Vehicles imported with the draft post status are stored in WordPress but are not publicly visible on the frontend. They can be reviewed and published manually from the CSP Cars → All Cars list.
• Taxonomies: Vehicle data is stored in 15 native WordPress taxonomies. Taxonomy archives (for example, all vehicles of a specific brand) are available without additional configuration.
• Translations: The plugin is fully translatable via the carsyncpro text domain. Translations must be provided separately.
• Log rotation: The plugin log file is automatically rotated when it exceeds 10 MB. Previous log files are archived with a timestamp.

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Troubleshooting

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Related documents

• Administrator Handbook
• Daily Usage Workflows
• Vehicle Import Workflow
• Lead Management Workflow
• Frontend Usage Workflow
• Connections Reference