“Unexpected error” on update requests

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It needs connectivity to wordpress.org and is timing out. I am behind a corporate firewall. I have never had this issue come up before in previous versions. Why does themes.php need access to wordpress.org and what can I do so it doesn’t (or maybe something that will allow me to use my proxy settings).

Adding in error message:

PHP Warning: An unexpected error occurred. Something may be wrong with
WordPress.org or this server’s configuration. If you continue to have
problems, please try the support forums. (WordPress could not
establish a secure connection to WordPress.org. Please contact your
server administrator.) in
C:\inetpub\wwwroot\ticket\wp-admin\includes\theme.php on line 298

This is definitely new to 3.7. We have 3.6.1 installed 4-5 times and no issues. I would have people chopping off my head if they couldn’t change their theme.

Update: 3.8 fixed a lot of the major issues. However we still cannot find plugins, find themes or get and of the dashboard feeds. If anyone has a solution to these – even if it a suggestion for the proxy server, that would be helpful.

4 s
4

Navigating WP admin in general tends to trigger multiple external requests, such as fetching news feeds and theme/plugin updates (not counting whatever plugin/themes might be doing on their own).

You can put configuration constants into wp-config.php to block external requests completely/partially:

define( 'WP_HTTP_BLOCK_EXTERNAL', true );
define( 'WP_ACCESSIBLE_HOSTS', 'api.wordpress.org,*.github.com' );

Or configure external requests to use your proxy settings:

define('WP_PROXY_HOST', '192.168.84.101');
define('WP_PROXY_PORT', '8080');
define('WP_PROXY_BYPASS_HOSTS', 'localhost, www.example.com, *.wordpress.org');

Plus WP_PROXY_USERNAME and WP_PROXY_PASSWORD for authentication.

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