Troubleshooting

Common Issues

"My images are broken / blank"

Cause: The 7-day retention policy.

• Solution: Unscheduled generated pins are cleaned up after 7 days. Download your pins (ZIP or CSV) within 7 days of generation, or schedule them to Pinterest. Pending scheduled pins are retained until publish, failure, or cancellation.

"Sitemap not found"

Cause: Your website might not have a public sitemap.xml, or it's blocked by a firewall (e.g., Cloudflare).

• Solution:
  1. Try entering the direct URL: https://yoursite.com/sitemap_index.xml.
  2. Check if your robots.txt blocks bots.
  3. PinBuilds includes a Cloudflare bypass — if your sitemap is behind Cloudflare, it will attempt a headless browser fallback automatically.

"Products are not loading"

Cause: The selected profile may be the wrong type or the store feed may not be public.

• Solution:
  1. Use a Shopify Store profile for Shopify storefronts and an Etsy Shop profile for Etsy shops.
  2. For Etsy, save the shop URL in Settings, e.g. https://www.etsy.com/shop/ShopName, not an individual listing URL.
  3. Confirm the store or shop is public and has active products.
  4. If the Dashboard says the Etsy RSS fallback was used, wait and retry later. Etsy RSS may only show a short recent-listing slice.
  5. If an Etsy shop still only shows a small recent slice of products, contact support so the Etsy Open API connector can be checked. See Etsy Product Workflows for details on Etsy imports.

"Generation Failed"

Cause: Temporary AI service issues.

• Solution: Wait a moment and try again. PinBuilds uses automatic failover between image providers, so most issues resolve quickly. If the problem persists, contact contact@pinbuilds.com.

"Pinterest account needs to be reconnected"

Cause: Your Pinterest OAuth token has expired or been revoked.

• Solution: Go to Settings, find the affected profile, and click "Connect Pinterest" to re-authorize. Your scheduled pins are preserved and will resume publishing once reconnected.

Scheduled pin shows "Failed"

Cause: Various issues can prevent a pin from publishing — expired tokens, Pinterest API errors, or invalid image URLs.

• Solution: Hover over the failed pin in the Manage Pins tab to see the error message. You can click "Retry" to re-queue it. If the error mentions authentication, reconnect your Pinterest account in Settings first.

WordPress plugin: posts not generating pins

Cause: The API key may be disconnected, or the post URL may be filtered as a generic page.

• Solution:
  1. Check that your API key is connected in Settings > PinBuilds in WordPress.
  2. Ensure the matching PinBuilds profile is a Website / Blog profile for your WordPress domain.
  3. Ensure the post URL is a real article — generic pages (about, contact, privacy, category archives) are automatically skipped.
  4. Check the backlog status — if your monthly generation limit is exhausted, processing pauses automatically.