[Resolved] Yet another cURL error 28: Connection timed out after 10001 milliseconds

[Michael]

I’m getting the dreaded “cURL error 28: Connection timed out after 10001 milliseconds” error when trying to add my my license key. It was working a few weeks ago and now none of the sites that were previously work are working now.

Again, this isn’t on 1 website but ALL my sites. It’s also happening on 2 different hosting providers. I’m also using all different version of PHP ranging from 7.1 and 7.4.

I looked at the other related posts and none of the suggestions worked. I even manually added the domain to the “Manage License” section and that didn’t make a difference.

The thing I find frustrating is that I’m using quite a number of themes and plugins and have never experienced this error. It seems exclusive to GP Premium and I’m certainly not the only one.

I would certainly appreciate a fix. I would also suggest that maybe the team here needs to revisit how license keys are managed.

[Tom]

Hi there,

What company are you hosted with?

Let me know 🙂

[Michael]

Hi Tom,

One set of sites are on A Small Orange. The most recent set that were working up until a few weeks ago are on DreamHost.

[Tom]

And both aren’t working?

This topic does come up a decent amount, but the overall percentage of people that run into this issue is still very small. Our server is specifically set to be very open when it comes to this kind of thing (for obvious reasons), and I’d say only 10% (if that) of the time it ends up being an IP blocked on our end.

I know none of that is helpful to the people who run into the issue, but it’s a tough problem to solve due to hundreds of different hosts out there all with different configurations (and most with support teams not experienced enough to understand those configurations).

I’m happy to check with Kinsta (our host) if you’d like to provide the IPs the requests are coming from. We can make sure they’re not blocked on our end. You can also ask those hosts to do traceroutes when pinging our server (generatepress.com) which I can share with Kinsta as well.

Thanks!

[Michael]

Hi Tom,

The IPs range all over the place depending on the site. For example, with DreamHost, they range from 69.163.22x.x and up where x changes depending on the site.

Also, when I go to the GeneratePress Site Library, I am able to view and import them in. Therefore, I’m assuming that GeneratePress isn’t being block by the hosting provider.

[Tom]

The Site Library is actually on a completely different server.

Can your hosts try to ping generatepress.com through your servers?

[Michael]

Hi Tom,

I just spent 30 minutes with DreamHost and nothing is being blocked.

They did the ping test, no problems. They checked their firewalls, nothing being blocked. They increased all the PHP values, disabled plugins, etc. and nothing worked. They’ve concluded it must be something from your side.

I can create an admin account for you and you can do whatever you need to do, if that’s quicker/easier?

[Tom]

Sure, worth a shot. You can send it here: https://generatepress.com/contact

Just be sure to mention this topic 🙂

[Michael]

I’ve sent an email with my site’s URL, a login and password to your support email address. I also created a login for the site and you should also receive an email from the site.

I hope we can resolve this.

[Tom]

Is it possible to try without Wordfence/iThemes activated? Wonder if one of them is preventing communication.

[Michael]

No, they wouldn’t be because those plugins are the last thing I install on the site once live and it’s not working even before that point. I disabled it on the test site and it still doesn’t work. In fact, I don’t even have the Wordfence Firewall enabled.

Also, previously, it was working on sites where both Wordfence and iThemes were installed and active. Again, it suddenly seemed to stop working. Maybe even around the release of 1.10.0

[Tom]

Is there any way we can try anyways? Just to cross it off the list.

It wouldn’t have anything to do with GP Premium itself (1.10.0 or any other version), or this would be happening to everyone.

[Michael]

Hi Tom,

Yes, I specifically deactivated and uninstalled everything except GPP and GeneratePress…and Really Simple SSL is enabled but that shouldn’t affect anything.

You should have received my email with the login to the test site as well as a login email from the website, which you get by default when you add an admin. Did you receive these? Did you login and take a look?

[Tom]

I did (which is how I saw you had WordFence and iThemes Security activated), and I did see the issue when trying to activate the license key.

Unfortunately, there isn’t much I can do except ask our server to make sure your server IPs aren’t banned on our end (this is very rarely the case, but I’m happy to if you’d like to share them with me).

GP Premium uses wp_remote_post() to make a request to generatepress.com with your license key so we can verify it. This is a core WordPress function that uses cURL to make the request.

This specific error happens when:

a) Your server doesn’t allow the outgoing request.
b) Our server doesn’t allow the incoming request.
c) Your server doesn’t allow the incoming response.

If it’s b), we can check your server IPs with our host so they can make sure they’re allowed to come through.

However, it’s almost always a) or c).

In order to verify license keys, some sort of communication has to happen, so this error is unavoidable in most cases if the host has blocks in place.

[Michael]

Hi Tom,

I just emailed support with a specific IP address to whitelist. Let’s try the one and see what happens.

Thanks.

[Author]

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