The shop maintains indexes: pre-built tables of prices, stock and products by category, so that pages load quickly. After changes in the admin, the indexes are refreshed in the background, usually within a minute. If they are not, the admin shows a warning.
The invalid index warning
The message One or more indexers are invalid. Make sure your Magento cron job is running. means the indexes have not been refreshed. What you see in the shop: a new price or stock level does not show, a product is missing from a category or search, filters show wrong numbers.
System › Tools › Index Management
- Status Ready is fine
- Reindex required means the index is waiting to be refreshed.
In the list, each index has a Status: Ready (fine) or Reindex required. The Mode column should say Update by Schedule; that way indexes are refreshed in the background and do not slow down saving products.
What you can do yourself
Wait a few minutes. After a large import or a price change on many products, refreshing takes longer.
Flush the cache (how). To clear the message about invalidated cache types (One or more of the Cache Types are invalidated), go to System › Tools › Cache Management, tick the rows with the status Invalidated, choose Refresh under Actions and click Submit.
- The Refresh action applies to the ticked rows
- rows with the Invalidated status are marked in red.
Reload the shop page with Ctrl + F5.
When to write to us
- the index warning stays for more than an hour,
- the admin is slow for several hours or pages do not load,
- a price, stock level or new product does not show in the shop even after flushing the cache,
- there is a red error message at the top of the admin that you do not understand.
In your message, tell us what you did just before the problem (import, settings change, new module) and when it started. That helps us find it faster.
Common problems
The shop is only slow in the morning
Tasks run overnight (sitemap, price calculation, reports). If this lasts longer than an hour, write to us and we will reschedule them.
After importing products, they are not in the shop
The indexes are still being refreshed. Wait a few minutes, flush the cache and check again.