First Setup

This guide explains what a WordPress administrator should configure after activating the ADP Car Market Hub plugin, and in which order. Following the recommended sequence avoids the most common rework — for example running an import before the API connection is validated, or going live before the frontend has been verified on a real vehicle page.

This document covers the setup flow. Detailed reference material for each admin tab is available in the Admin Reference section. A dedicated reference for the in-plugin First Setup Wizard is provided in Setup Wizard Reference.

First Setup Wizard

ADP Car Market Hub ships with a First Setup Wizard that walks an administrator through the most common configuration choices in seven concise steps. The first step is license activation, which is mandatory: until a valid license is activated, every operational wizard step (and every plugin admin tab other than Settings) stays locked. Once the license is active, the remaining steps are the recommended entry point for both demo evaluations and live AutoScout24 deployments, but are not mandatory — every option they offer can also be configured manually using the regular admin tabs documented in the Admin Reference.

What the wizard does

• Activates your license as the first step. The license unlocks the plugin's premium areas; without it the wizard cannot proceed past the license screen and the other admin tabs show a "License required" screen.
• Lets the admin choose between Demo setup (installs demo vehicles, applies demo defaults and enables analytics so the Dashboard and Analytics pages have data to display) and Live AutoScout24 setup (saves real credentials and selected pages without installing demo data).
• Captures the dealer profile (name, address, contact details, logo).
• Captures the AutoScout24 connection (Client ID, Client Secret, Seller ID, API Base URL).
• Optionally creates the public-facing pages Cars, Compare Cars and Favorites with the canonical shortcodes.
• Toggles the most common feature defaults (social sharing, PDF datasheet, PDF QR code, running costs per 100 km, Compare, Favorites, Search Alerts, Analytics tracking).
• Marks setup as complete and returns the admin to the Dashboard.

When the wizard appears

• After the first activation of the plugin, an admin notice titled Welcome to ADP Car Market Hub appears at the top of every WordPress admin page.
• The notice is not a forced redirect — the admin can keep browsing WordPress and start the wizard later.
• The notice is shown only when all of the following are true:
• The current user has the plugin's management capability.
• A first-activation timestamp has been recorded.
• The wizard has not been marked as completed.
• The wizard has not been marked as skipped.
• Plugin upgrades that do not trigger a fresh activation do not surface the notice on existing installations.

How to start the wizard

• Click Start Setup Wizard in the welcome notice, or
• Open Car Market Hub → Dashboard and use the Run Setup Wizard link near the top, or
• Open Car Market Hub → Tools and use the Setup Wizard card.

The wizard is registered as a hidden admin page reachable at wp-admin/admin.php?page=as24ci-setup-wizard. Capability and nonce checks are enforced on every step.

How to skip the wizard

• Click Skip for now in the welcome notice. The notice will not reappear on subsequent admin page loads.
• The wizard remains reachable from the Dashboard and the Tools tab so it can be resumed at any time.

Wizard steps

1. License — enter and activate your license key. This step is enforced first; the wizard cannot continue to any operational step until the license is operational. The license key is write-only — it is never pre-filled on the screen.
2. Mode — choose Demo setup or Live AutoScout24 setup; pick dealer country, currency and admin language.
3. Dealer profile — name, street, postal code, city, country, phone, email, website, logo.
4. AutoScout24 — Client ID, Client Secret, Seller ID and API Base URL. The Client Secret field is intentionally rendered empty (see API Credentials Setup).
5. Pages — for each public page (Cars, Compare Cars, Favorites) choose Create automatically, Use existing page or Skip.
6. Features — enable or disable the feature defaults listed above.
7. Finish — review the summary and confirm. In Demo mode the finish step also triggers the existing demo data installer; in Live mode it only saves the wizard's settings.

Existing-install safety

• Plugin activation only seeds non-destructive defaults; it never overwrites existing option values.
• Deactivating and reactivating the plugin does not reopen the wizard automatically and does not overwrite settings.
• The wizard only changes settings whose form fields the admin actually submits.
• Demo setup is the only path that installs demo data and resets demo-controlled options; it is an explicit reset and seed operation. Live setup is non-destructive with respect to vehicles and customer settings.

For full details on flags, capabilities, hidden admin page URL and step storage behavior, see Setup Wizard Reference.

When to use this document

Use this document if you are:

• Configuring ADP Car Market Hub on a freshly activated installation.
• Re-configuring the plugin after a server migration, environment rebuild or staging-to-production promotion.
• Documenting a repeatable on-boarding process for a new customer site.

The audience is a WordPress administrator who has already completed the Installation Guide and has access to the AutoScout24 API credentials provided by the dealer's account or their integration partner.

Before you start

Confirm the following before beginning configuration:

• The plugin is installed and activated and the Car Market Hub menu appears in the WordPress admin.
• The site meets all entries on the Pre-Installation Checklist.
• You have your ADP Car Market Hub license key. The license is required to unlock the plugin's premium areas: until it is activated, every admin tab except Settings shows a "License required" screen and imports, cron and the other features stay locked.
• You have the AutoScout24 API credentials required by your account: API Base URL, Seller ID(s), Client ID and Client Secret. These come from the dealer's AutoScout24 account or from the integration partner that operates the API access. The plugin does not provide them.
• You have decided on business defaults that will influence the configuration: default currency, which legal/consent text the dealer wants on contact forms, and which features (Test Drive booking, Search Alerts, AI Assistant, Analytics) should be enabled at launch.
• A backup of the WordPress site is in place, and ideally configuration is being performed on a staging environment that mirrors production.

Recommended setup order

The following ten steps are the recommended sequence. Each step builds on the previous one. Do not skip ahead — for example, do not enable automatic imports before the connection test has succeeded.

1. License activation
2. System readiness
3. API credentials
4. Connection test
5. Import settings
6. Layout and frontend settings
7. Legal, privacy and consent settings
8. Test import
9. Frontend validation
10. Go-live checks

Step by step instructions

Step 1 — License activation

Open Car Market Hub → Settings and complete the License Activation card at the top of the page. Enter your license key and click Activate. A successful activation unlocks the plugin's premium areas; the Car Market Hub admin tabs other than Settings stop showing the "License required" screen, and imports, cron and background processing become available.

The license key is write-only: it is never displayed back to you after saving. The same card also offers Check license (re-validates the stored key) and Remove license (clears the key while keeping your imported vehicles, pages and media). If you started with the First Setup Wizard, license activation is its first step, so this is already done.

Do not continue until the license is active. Without it the remaining configuration tabs stay locked.

Step 2 — System readiness

Open Car Market Hub → System & Help and review the environment checks. The page reports the status of PHP, JSON, OpenSSL, cURL, GD/Imagick, the uploads directory, the cron schedule, the token cache, the log file and the image queue, with traffic-light style status badges.

Resolve any red badges before continuing. Typical actions include enabling a missing PHP extension, fixing permissions on the uploads directory, or addressing a non-functional WP-Cron.

For a deeper review of the environment, see Technical System Requirements and API, Network and SSL Requirements.

Step 3 — API credentials

Open Car Market Hub → Settings and complete the API Connection & General Settings card:

• API Base URL — the full HTTPS URL for your AutoScout24 environment or integration endpoint, including https://.
• Seller ID — one or more Seller IDs, separated by commas if you operate multiple seller accounts.
• Client ID and Client Secret — the credentials issued for your API access.
• Default currency — the currency used when an imported listing does not provide one.

Click Save Settings at the bottom of the card.

A complete walk-through of every credential field, where it comes from and how to handle it safely is provided in API Credentials Setup. For background on obtaining API access, see AutoScout24 API Setup and External API Credentials.

Step 4 — Connection test

After saving credentials, validate them before any import. Open Car Market Hub → Tools and use the API Connection Test card. Click Test Connection. A successful test confirms that the plugin can authenticate against the configured token endpoint and reach the AutoScout24 listings API for the first configured Seller ID.

Do not continue to import settings until the connection test succeeds. The full procedure, including how to interpret the result and how to react to common errors, is documented in Connection Test.

Step 5 — Import settings

Once the connection works, configure how vehicles are imported. The relevant settings live in two places:

• Car Market Hub → Settings — image options (whether to import images, maximum images per vehicle, optional WebP conversion and quality), default post status and post author for newly created vehicles, and the Default pages option that can create the Cars, Compare Cars and Favorites pages on save.
• Car Market Hub → Import & Limits — scheduling and runtime behaviour: the WP-Cron interval (hourly, every 6 hours, twice daily, daily or custom), the start time for daily/twice-daily schedules, the optional Full Sync mode (which deletes local cars no longer present on AutoScout24), and the cron robustness settings (maximum vehicles per cron run, image queue toggle).

For initial setup, choose conservative values:

• Leave automatic scheduling disabled for now. Schedule it after a successful test import.
• Keep the image queue enabled so cron runs do not exceed PHP timeouts.
• Leave Full Sync disabled until you have verified that all expected vehicles arrive correctly. Full Sync permanently deletes local posts, including images, for any listing not returned by the API.

For external (server-level) cron, including the token-secured REST endpoint, see Server Cron Setup.

Step 6 — Layout and frontend settings

Configure how vehicles will be presented on the frontend before exposing them to visitors:

• Car Market Hub → Design & Styles — colours, fonts, archive and single-vehicle layouts, gallery layout, lightbox, condition badges and intro/footer text on archive pages.
• Car Market Hub → Layout Manager — enable/disable individual filters that appear on the car archive (make, model, year, price, mileage, fuel, gearbox, colour, body type and others).
• Car Market Hub → Mapping — control the human-readable labels and the visibility of each AutoScout24 data field on detail pages. Defaults are sensible; adjust only the labels or visibility you actually want to change.
• Car Market Hub → Shortcodes & Widgets — the reference for shortcodes used in custom page layouts (for example the compare and favorites pages). If you enabled the Default pages option in Settings, the corresponding pages already exist; otherwise place the shortcodes manually.

Step 7 — Legal, privacy and consent settings

ADP Car Market Hub processes lead data and, optionally, search-alert subscriptions. Configure the corresponding settings before going live:

• Car Market Hub → Leads — configure the recipient email address, the visible form fields, the consent checkbox (label and required state) and the notification messages. The consent text and the visible fields must reflect the dealer's privacy policy.
• Car Market Hub → Leads — also configure the Test Drive booking options (available weekdays, daily time window, slot duration, blackout dates) on this tab. Car Market Hub → Search Alerts — if the Search Alerts feature is enabled on the Settings tab (or in the Setup Wizard), manage subscriptions here. Search Alerts use GDPR-compliant Double-Opt-In email confirmation; the email templates for dealer and customer notifications are configured on the Search Alerts tab and on the Leads tab respectively.
• Site-wide privacy policy — the WordPress site must have a published privacy policy that covers the data the plugin collects (contact form data, optional analytics events, optional search-alert subscriptions).

Background information is available in Lead Data and Consent, Search Alerts Double Opt-In, GDPR / DSGVO Notes and the Data Storage Overview.

Step 8 — Test import

Run a small, controlled import before enabling automatic scheduling.

Two safe options:

• Dry run. Open Car Market Hub → Tools and use the Dry Run card. It fetches a preview of listings for the configured Seller ID(s) without writing any vehicle posts. This validates that the credentials reach actual data without modifying the site.
• Manual import via Car Importer. Open Car Market Hub → Car Importer. Preview the listings returned by the API and trigger an import for one or two individual vehicles. This creates real as24ci_car posts and attaches images, so it is the fastest way to validate the full import path end to end.

Once a small import is successful, run a full manual import via the Batch-Wizard on Car Market Hub → Import & Limits. The Batch-Wizard runs in adaptive batches with a progress bar and can be paused, resumed or aborted.

Review the Logs tab afterwards to confirm there were no warnings or errors.

Step 9 — Frontend validation

After the test import, validate the frontend with real data:

• Open the Cars archive page (or the page where the vehicle archive is embedded). Confirm that vehicle cards render correctly, that images load, that filters work as configured and that pagination behaves as expected.
• Open at least one single vehicle page. Confirm the gallery, the vehicle details table, the equipment list, the price formatting, the contact form (and consent checkbox), and any optional features you have enabled (financing calculator, Test Drive form, social sharing).
• Submit a test contact form from the single vehicle page. Confirm that the lead appears under Car Market Hub → Leads and that the recipient email is delivered.
• If Search Alerts are enabled, complete one test subscription including the Double-Opt-In confirmation email.
• If the AI Assistant is enabled, verify on at least one vehicle that the AI-generated description (and other AI outputs you enabled) is acceptable for publication.

Fix any issues — labels, missing fields, layout — by adjusting the relevant tab (Mapping, Design & Styles, Layout Manager, Leads, Settings) and re-validating.

Step 10 — Go live checks

Only after the previous steps are complete, prepare the site for go-live:

• Enable automatic imports on Car Market Hub → Import & Limits with a sensible interval (for many dealers an hourly schedule is appropriate; smaller catalogues can use daily). On hosts that throttle WP-Cron, configure a real server cron job pointing to the plugin's token-secured REST endpoint as described in Server Cron Setup.
• Decide whether to enable Full Sync so that listings removed on AutoScout24 are also removed from the site. Enable this only after you have verified that all expected vehicles consistently appear in the import.
• Re-run the Connection Test as a final sanity check.
• Walk through the Go Live Checklist to capture every remaining cross-cutting item (DNS, caching, search engine visibility, monitoring).

Configuration notes

• Settings page only saves visible cards. The Settings page groups options into cards (API Connection & General Settings, Default Pages & Shortcodes, etc.) each with its own Save button. Save the card you have edited before navigating away.
• Default pages. If the Default pages option is enabled and the corresponding pages do not yet exist, saving Settings creates the Cars, Compare Cars and Favorites pages automatically. If you manage these pages manually, leave the option disabled and place the shortcodes from the Shortcodes & Widgets tab.
• Default currency. The default currency only affects new or updated imports for which the API returns no currency value. Existing posts keep their stored currency.
• Mapping vs. taxonomies. The Mapping tab controls labels and visibility of fields in detail tables only. It does not change the underlying WordPress taxonomies that store imported attribute values. Renaming a Mapping label does not move existing taxonomy terms.
• Image queue. When the image queue is enabled, cron imports download only the first image per vehicle synchronously; remaining images are processed asynchronously by a background worker. This is the recommended default and prevents PHP timeouts on large catalogues.
• Full Sync is destructive. Full Sync permanently deletes local car posts (including images) for listings no longer returned by the API. Treat it as a production-grade option and only enable it once imports are stable.

Operational notes

• Stage first, then production. All configuration steps in this document should be performed first on a staging copy. Once the dealership signs off on the staging behaviour, replicate the configuration on production. Do not export and import the entire WordPress database between staging and production unless you understand the impact on URLs, options and IDs.
• Day-to-day operation. After setup, day-to-day responsibilities (monitoring imports, processing leads, reviewing logs) are covered in Daily Operation and the User Handbook.
• Capabilities and delegation. Initial setup requires a full WordPress administrator. For ongoing operations, the plugin provisions a delegated capability and role so that day-to-day users do not need full WordPress administration rights. See Access Control and Capabilities.
• Logging. All API calls, token requests, import actions and errors are logged to the plugin log files in wp-content/uploads/as24ci-logs/ with rotation. Verbose logging adds per-vehicle and per-image detail and should be enabled temporarily for troubleshooting only.

Troubleshooting

Related documents

• Installation Guide
• API Credentials Setup
• Connection Test
• Go Live Checklist
• Pre-Installation Checklist
• Technical System Requirements
• API, Network and SSL Requirements
• AutoScout24 API Setup
• External API Credentials
• Server Cron Setup