Documentation · System Requirements

Hosting Requirements

Introduction

ADP Car Market Hub does not impose unusual demands on a WordPress host: any provider that meets the official WordPress requirements and allows outbound HTTPS to the AutoScout24 API can run it. That said, vehicle imports involve thousands of API calls, image downloads, scheduled background work and a growing media library, so the practical hosting profile is closer to a busy WooCommerce shop than to a brochure site.

This document describes hosting, server resources, outbound HTTPS access, storage, backups, staging and production-readiness considerations for ADP Car Market Hub.

When to use this document

Use this document when you:

  • Choose a hosting plan for a new dealership site.
  • Validate that an existing host can comfortably handle the plugin's import workload.
  • Plan storage capacity for vehicle images and plugin logs.
  • Set up a staging environment, backup policy or production launch checklist.

Overview

The plugin's hosting profile is shaped by these workloads:

  • Periodic outbound HTTPS to AutoScout24 (every cron run) and to the managed Google Gemini endpoint when the AI Assistant is enabled.
  • Image downloads from AutoScout24 image hosts into wp-content/uploads/, with optional WebP re-encoding.
  • PHP CPU and memory bursts during the Batch-Wizard, Full Sync and AI generation tasks.
  • Continuous low-volume database writes for analytics events, leads, search alerts and cron heartbeats.
  • File-based logs in wp-content/uploads/as24ci-logs/ (rotated at 10 MB, 7 days retention).

A host that can comfortably run a mid-sized WooCommerce store will run this plugin without issues.

Requirements

Web server

  • Software: Any web server officially supported by WordPress — typically Nginx or Apache (LiteSpeed and Caddy are also fine in practice).
  • HTTPS: A valid TLS certificate on the public site. There is no plugin-level enforcement, but the AutoScout24 API and modern browsers expect HTTPS.
  • PHP handler: PHP-FPM (or equivalent) with PHP 8.1+ (see PHP and Database Requirements for details).
  • URL rewriting: Active rewrite engine (mod_rewrite for Apache, try_files for Nginx) so that pretty permalinks and the REST API work.

Server resources

These are practical recommendations; the plugin code does not enforce specific values beyond the PHP limits checked by the System & Help tab.

  • CPU: 1 vCPU minimum for small inventories (< 100 vehicles); 2 vCPU+ recommended for mid-sized inventories or when AI generation is enabled.
  • RAM: 1 GB total server memory minimum; 2 GB+ recommended. The plugin's PHP memory_limit should be at least 256 MB (the System & Help tab flags anything below 128 MB as "too low").
  • PHP execution time: max_execution_time of 120 seconds or more is recommended for image-heavy imports; the System & Help tab flags 30–60 seconds as merely "acceptable".
  • Concurrency: Allow at least 2 concurrent PHP workers so that a long-running import does not block the public site or admin dashboard.

Outbound HTTPS access

The server must be able to make outbound HTTPS (port 443) requests to:

  • https://api.autoscout24.com — mandatory. Used by the importer for OAuth tokens, listings and image URLs.
  • AutoScout24 image CDN hosts — mandatory. Vehicle image URLs returned by the API are downloaded directly.
  • https://generativelanguage.googleapis.com — required when the AI Assistant is enabled. Used to call the managed Google Gemini endpoint configured in AS24CI\Ai_Config.
  • https://api.wordpress.org — recommended, so WordPress and plugin updates work normally.

If the host uses an outbound firewall or proxy, allow these destinations and make sure standard WordPress HTTP transports (wp_remote_get / wp_remote_post, which use cURL under the hood) function.

Storage

  • Minimum free disk space: The System & Help tab flags < 100 MB free as critical and < 500 MB free as a warning. Treat 1 GB free as an absolute minimum, even for small inventories.
  • Practical sizing: Plan for roughly 5–25 MB of media storage per vehicle, depending on image count and whether WebP conversion is enabled. A 200-vehicle dealer typically uses 1–5 GB of uploads.
  • Filesystem permissions: wp-content/uploads/ must be writable by the PHP process. The plugin will create wp-content/uploads/as24ci-logs/ on first use and protect it with the standard WordPress hardening files.
  • Inode limits: Hosts with strict inode quotas should account for many small files (each vehicle image plus its WordPress-generated intermediate sizes).

Email

A working transactional email path is required for end-user features:

  • Lead notifications from the contact form.
  • Test-drive booking notifications.
  • Search-alert (Smart Stock Alerts) double-opt-in confirmations.
  • WordPress administrative emails (password resets, error notifications).

A hosting-provided MTA, an SMTP plugin pointing at a deliverability provider (Postmark, SendGrid, Brevo, Amazon SES, etc.), or a corporate SMTP relay all work.

Backups

The plugin does not ship a backup mechanism — backups are a hosting responsibility. A production deployment should include:

  • Daily database backups covering all WordPress tables, including the plugin's custom tables ({prefix}as24_vehicles, the analytics table, the search-alerts table).
  • Daily file-system backups of wp-content/uploads/ (vehicle images and plugin logs) and wp-content/plugins/.
  • Off-site retention of at least 7 days; longer if local data-protection policies require it.
  • Test restores at least quarterly. Full Sync deletions are permanent, so tested backups are the recovery path.

Staging and production readiness

A clean staging environment is strongly recommended before launching or upgrading:

  • A separate WordPress instance on the same PHP/MySQL versions as production.
  • Distinct AutoScout24 credentials where possible, or read-only use to avoid mutating production data.
  • Distinct cron tokens for each environment.
  • A documented promotion process (database export/import, search-replace of URLs, plugin re-activation to refresh roles and rewrite rules).
  • The plugin's "System & Help" / Health tab passing all checks on staging before promoting changes to production.
  • Managed WordPress hosting on a recent PHP 8.x branch with PHP-FPM, Nginx or Apache, MySQL 8 / MariaDB 10.6+, and a 1+ vCPU / 2 GB RAM container or VM.
  • TLS 1.2+ on inbound connections and a modern outbound TLS stack with up-to-date CA certificates.
  • 256 MB+ PHP memory_limit, 300 s max_execution_time, 64 MB+ upload_max_filesize.
  • 10 GB+ disk allocated to wp-content/uploads/ from day one.
  • OS-level cron triggering wp-cron.php (or the plugin's REST cron endpoint) every 5–15 minutes, with DISABLE_WP_CRON set in wp-config.php.
  • SMTP via a transactional provider with SPF/DKIM/DMARC properly aligned.
  • Daily off-site backups of database + uploads, retained for at least 30 days.
  • Identical staging environment, refreshed periodically from production.
  • Uptime monitoring on the public archive URL and on the cron trigger endpoint.

Operational notes

  • Vehicle images dominate disk growth. Monitor uploads usage over time and either prune obsolete media (the plugin removes images for deleted cars automatically) or move uploads to object storage via a media-offload plugin.
  • Hosts with aggressive PHP worker recycling (e.g. killing workers after 30 s) can interrupt large imports. Use the Batch-Wizard (small adaptive batches) or the image queue (asynchronous processing) instead of one giant import.
  • CDNs and reverse proxies should pass the cron token query parameter through unchanged, and should not cache wp-admin/, wp-login.php, wp-cron.php or /wp-json/as24ci/v1/* responses.
  • The managed Gemini endpoint can have high per-request latency. If you enable AI generation during imports, raise max_execution_time accordingly and prefer the asynchronous AI generation queue.
  • Plugin logs grow steadily when verbose logging is on. The plugin rotates them at 10 MB and deletes rotated files older than 7 days, but the directory should still be included in regular disk-usage monitoring.

Troubleshooting

  • Slow imports / frequent timeouts: Increase PHP memory and execution time, lower the per-cron vehicle batch size, and ensure the image queue is enabled.
  • "Connection issue – could not fetch listings": Check outbound HTTPS to api.autoscout24.com, DNS resolution from the server, and whether a corporate proxy or WAF is intercepting the request.
  • Images fail to download: Verify free disk space, uploads-folder permissions, and that the AutoScout24 image hosts are reachable.
  • Disk space alerts: Use the System & Help tab's storage card to confirm the free-space figure, then either clean up old media or extend the volume.
  • Emails not delivered: Configure an SMTP plugin or hosting MTA; many shared hosts block direct PHP mail().
  • Backups fail to capture all plugin data: Ensure the backup tool covers the entire WordPress database (including custom tables prefixed with {wp_prefix}as24_) and the entire wp-content/uploads/ directory.