How to Manage Feeds?.

Manage Feeds is the control center for every product feed you build with CTX Feed. It is the screen you land on when you open the plugin, and it lists all of your feeds in one table — so every feed management task lives in one place: generate, schedule, download, edit, duplicate, or delete any feed without leaving the page.

This guide walks through the Manage Feeds screen top to bottom and explains what each control does.

1. Header actions — Clear Cache, Import Feed, and Make Feed.
2. Search-and-filter toolbar — find feeds by name, channel, or status.
3. The feed table — one row per feed, with its status, URL, schedule, and actions.

Where to find Manage Feeds

In your WordPress dashboard, go to CTX Feed → Manage Feeds. This is the plugin’s home screen.

• If you have not created a feed yet, you will see a short “No feeds yet” panel with two buttons — Make your first feed and Import a feed file.
• Once you have at least one feed, this screen shows the full feed list described below.

The feed list at a glance

Each feed you create is one row in the table. The columns are:

Column	What it shows
Auto Update	A toggle that turns scheduled, automatic regeneration on or off for that feed.
Feed	The channel logo, the feed name, a file-type badge (XML, CSV, TSV, TXT, or JSON), and the channel it was built for. The name is a real link: click it to edit the feed, or right-click / middle-click to open the editor in a new tab.
Feed URL	The public URL of the generated feed file, with a one-click copy button. While a feed is generating, a live progress bar appears here instead.
Schedule	The auto-update interval in short form — 1h, 6h, 12h, 24h, 1w, or 5m/15m/30m/45m with CTX Feed Pro — or Manual when auto-update is off. A red Not scheduled badge next to the interval means auto-update is on but no run is registered; CTX Feed re-registers stalled schedules on its own, and if the badge stays, re-save the feed.
Last Generated	How long ago the feed file was last built, with the exact date and time. Right after a generation finishes, this time turns green and the whole row gets a light green tint for ten seconds, so you can spot the feed you just built in a long list.
Actions	A quick Regenerate button and a ⋮ (more actions) menu. This column stays pinned to the right as the table scrolls.

1. Auto Update toggle.
2. Feed — channel logo, feed name (a link: click to edit, right-click to open in a new tab), and file-type badge.
3. Feed URL with a copy button.
4. Schedule.
5. Last Generated.
6. Actions — quick Regenerate button and the ⋮ menu.

The Feed URL is the link you submit to a marketing channel — Google Merchant Center, Meta Commerce Manager, Pinterest, and so on. Copy it here and paste it into the channel’s feed settings; the channel fetches fresh product data from that URL on its own schedule.

Copy or open a feed URL

The Feed URL column has two quick controls for every feed:

1. Copy — copies the full feed URL to your clipboard (the box briefly turns green and shows “Copied”), ready to paste into a channel’s feed settings.
2. Open — opens the live feed file in a new browser tab so you can check its contents.

Search and filter your feeds

When you manage many feeds, the toolbar above the table helps you find the right one:

• Search feeds — filters the list as you type, matching the feed name and the channel.
• Channel filter — narrows the list to a single channel (for example, only your Google feeds).
• Status filter — shows only feeds in a given state (see below).
• Showing X of Y feeds — a running count of how many feeds match your current search and filters.

1. Search feeds — filter by feed name or channel.
2. Channel filter — narrow the list to one channel.
3. Status filter — Any status, Ready, or Not scheduled.
4. Result count — “Showing X of Y feeds”.

What the feed statuses mean

The Status filter shows Any status by default, plus two at-a-glance states:

• Ready — auto-update is on and the feed is on a schedule, including the 5, 15, 30 and 45-minute intervals of CTX Feed Pro.
• Not scheduled — auto-update is off, so the feed only rebuilds when you regenerate it manually.

If a scheduled feed’s Last Generated time keeps drifting past its interval, scheduled runs are being missed — regenerate it and check your cron setup.

Actions for a single feed

Use the Regenerate button in the Actions column to rebuild a feed’s file with your latest products and prices. Small catalogs finish in a few seconds; large catalogs build in the background and show a progress bar, so you can keep working while they run.

While a feed generates, a log console opens under its row and reports each batch. When it finishes, the row turns green for ten seconds and the Last Generated time updates.

If a run cannot complete, the row shows Failed and the console says Generation failed — check the feed log for the reason. Your previous feed file is kept: a failed run never replaces a good feed with an empty one, so the channels fetching your URL keep receiving the last complete file. Open Download Log in the ⋮ menu to read why the run failed, fix the cause, and regenerate.

The previous file is also kept when the new file cannot be written completely (for example, the server disk or storage quota is full) and when a run finds 0 products. A 0-product run is not marked Failed: a warning says the previous feed file was kept and its Last Generated time was not changed. Check the feed’s filters and that your products are published, then regenerate.

If the console instead says Generation stalled, the background scheduler on your site is not picking up the job — see How to set up cron for automatic feed updates.

For everything else, open the ⋮ (more actions) menu on the feed’s row:

• Preview — opens the generated feed file in a new browser tab so you can inspect its contents.
• Regenerate — rebuilds the feed file now (same as the quick button).
• Edit Feed — opens the feed in the editor to change its channel, attributes, filters, or schedule.
• Duplicate — creates a copy of the feed (you choose the new name) and generates it right away. Handy for building a second channel from a feed you have already set up.
• Download — saves the generated feed file to your computer.
• Export Config — downloads the feed’s configuration as a .wpf file you can back up or import into another site.
• Download Log — downloads the feed’s generation log for troubleshooting. Logs are always recorded; if CTX Feed says there is no log yet, the feed just has not been generated since install — regenerate it once and download again.
• Report — a per-feed performance report. This is a preview entry for an upcoming feature; choosing it currently shows a “coming soon” notice.
• Delete Feed — permanently removes the feed file and its configuration. Any channel still fetching that URL stops receiving updates, so delete with care.

Auto-update and scheduling

The Auto Update toggle controls whether a feed rebuilds on its own. Turn it on and CTX Feed regenerates the feed on the interval set in the feed’s settings (for example, every few hours or once a week) — so the file your channels download always reflects your current catalog. Turn it off to keep the feed Manual and rebuild it yourself with Regenerate.

Choosing when a feed runs. There is no time-of-day field; the schedule is anchored to the moment auto-update is switched on. Turning the toggle on at 02:00 with a 24-hour interval makes the feed run at about 02:00 every day (CTX Feed adds a fixed offset of up to five minutes per feed so that feeds on the same interval do not all start in the same second). To move a feed to a different hour, switch Auto Update off and straight back on at the hour you want. Saving the feed’s settings does not move the schedule on purpose, so an edit never pushes the next run back.

Feeds set to the same interval run one after another, not all at once, so on a large store it is normal for several 24-hour feeds to finish a few minutes apart.

Automatic updates rely on WordPress cron running reliably on your site. If scheduled feeds are not refreshing, see How to set up cron for automatic feed updates.

Bulk actions

To act on several feeds at once, tick the checkbox at the start of each row (or the header checkbox to select all). A bulk bar appears with the number selected and these actions:

• Turn auto-update on / Turn auto-update off for every selected feed.
• Duplicate the selected feeds. Bulk copies are created but not generated — edit each copy as needed, then regenerate it. (A single-feed Duplicate from the ⋮ menu does generate the copy immediately.)
• Delete the selected feeds.

Use Clear to drop the selection.

With rows selected, the bar shows how many are selected and offers Turn auto-update on/off, Duplicate, and Delete — plus Clear to drop the selection.

Header actions

At the top-right of the Manage Feeds screen:

• Clear Cache — clears CTX Feed’s cached product data. Run this if a feed keeps showing outdated product information after you have changed products, then regenerate the feed.
• Import Feed — recreate a feed from a .wpf configuration file you exported earlier (with Export Config).
• Make Feed — start a new product feed.

Tips and troubleshooting

• A scheduled feed keeps falling behind its interval? Regenerate it, then confirm WordPress cron is running so future updates happen on time.
• Feed URL is empty or shows “—”? The feed has not been generated yet — click Regenerate.
• A feed shows Failed? The last run did not complete and your previous feed file was kept. Choose Download Log for the reason (a product that could not be read, a plugin conflict during the run, a server limit), fix it, and regenerate.
• A run found 0 products? The previous feed file was kept. Check the feed’s filters and that your products are published, then regenerate.
• Products look out of date? Use Clear Cache, then regenerate the feed.
• Need a generation log? Choose Download Log in the feed’s ⋮ menu — logs are always recorded. If CTX Feed says there is no log yet, regenerate the feed once first. For deeper diagnostics, see debug mode and logs.

Frequently asked questions

Related guides

• How to create a WooCommerce product feed
• How to set up cron for automatic feed updates
• How to enable debug mode and download logs