WP Ultimo Version 1, Increase Page Loads and cURL timeouts for versions.nextpress.co

Introduction

I have a customer running WP Ultimo Version 1, specifically the latest version of their 1.x.x branch which is 1.10.18 and they were getting 30-second page loads no matter the page. The server load was high, but it didn’t make sense that the page loads were so high. I did upgrade their instance just as a quick measure for troubleshooting, and no difference. So I started digging further into WordPress, something was delaying the loads.

Root Cause Analysis

Typically I set up php-fpm slow log, but this customer was running Openlitespeed, and unfortunately, LSAPI_SLOW_REQ_MSECS doesn’t work with Openlitespeed. So I turned to the trusty Query Monitor.

From there, I found that there I found the following issues API was timing out after 5000 secs.

The plugin in question was wp-ultimo, I blocked out the license key but the request looks to be verifying licensing information. The functions are as follows.

WU_Page_Feature_Plugins->get_remote_addons_count()
wp-content/plugins/wp-ultimo/inc/class-wu-pages-feature-plugins.php:181
WU_Page_Feature_Plugins->get_new_addon_count()
wp-content/plugins/wp-ultimo/inc/class-wu-pages-feature-plugins.php:74

WU_Page_Addons->get_remote_addons_count()
wp-content/plugins/wp-ultimo/inc/class-wu-pages-addons.php:194
WU_Page_Addons->get_new_addon_count()
wp-content/plugins/wp-ultimo/inc/class-wu-pages-addons.php:83

Upon further investigation, the link is no longer working. I ran a curl on the versions.nextpress.co and the sub-domain seems to be not responding at all.

But how do we fix this? You can go through the code and comment out anything that relates to get_remote_addons_count() or $this->get_remote_golden_ticket(); which is another function that was causing the same problem.

Resolutions

Option #1 – Update /etc/hosts file

If you’re running a VPS or bare metal instance, you can simply edit your /etc/hosts file if you have root and add the following.

# Fix ultimo issue
127.0.0.1 versions.nextpress.co

This will essentially point versions.nextpress.co to your local server which will return a response, versus not returning a response and timing out. This isn’t a good long term resolution, I’m looking at developing a mu-plugin to disable the remote check. But for now, this works.

Option #2 – Hook into pre_http_request

This wasn’t Option #2 original, it was actually Option #3 which unfortunately doesn’t account for all cases. So I replaced it with the code below. Simply put this into your mu-plugin folder and goodbye to 10+ second load times.

add_filter('pre_http_request', function($pre, $r, $url) {
    if (strpos($url, 'https://versions.nextpress.co/updates/') !== 0) {
        //error_log("Good API: $url");
        return $pre;
    } else {
    // Target only WP Ultimo update/license server calls
        //error_log("Bad API: $url");
        return [
              'headers' => [],
                    'body'    => '',
                    'response' => ['code' => 201, 'message' => 'OK'],
                    'cookies'  => [],
                    'filename' => null,
                ];
    }
}, 10, 3);

I have more code snippets at https://github.com/managingwp/wordpress-code-snippets

Option #3 – Hook into Transient Data Before it’s Retrieved (Half Works, Use Option 2)

Note: This doesn’t capture all instances, see Option 2

With WordPress, you can hook into any transient data before it’s retrieved and affect the value using the pre_site_transiet_ function.

/* wu_golden_ticket */
function wu_gold_ticket_return_true($value, $transient) {
    if ($transient === 'wu_golden_ticket') {
        return true;
    }
    return $value; // Return original value for other transients
}
add_filter('pre_site_transient_wu_golden_ticket', 'wu_gold_ticket_return_true', 10, 2);

    /* wu_saved_ff_count */
function wu_saved_ff_count_return_true($value, $transient) {
    if ($transient === 'wu_saved_ff_count') {
        return "10";
    }
    return $value; // Return original value for other transients
}
add_filter('pre_site_transient_wu_saved_ff_count', 'wu_saved_ff_count_return_true', 10, 2);

So with the following code we can change the value of both wu_golden_ticket and wu_saved_ff_count to true and skip the process of reaching out to the now disabled domain versions.nextpress.co that takes 5 seconds to timeout.

Option #3 – Upgrade to Ultimo 2.x.x

Another solution is to upgrade to WP Ultimo 2.x.x where this most likely isn’t occuring.

Change Log

04-24-2025 – Updated Option 2 with a proper fix.