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.
Resolution
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 $this->get_remote_golden_ticket(); which is another function that was causing the same problem.
Option #1 – Update /etc/hosts file
If you’re running a VPS or bare metal instance, you can simply edit your /etc/hosts file if you have root and add the following.
# Fix ultimo issue 127.0.0.1 versions.nextpress.co
This will essentially point versions.nextpress.co to your local server which will return a response, versus not returning a response and timing out. This isn’t a good long term resolution, I’m looking at developing a mu-plugin to disable the remote check. But for now, this works.
Option #2 – Hook into Transient Data Before it’s Retrieved
With WordPress, you can hook into any transient data before it’s retrieved and affect the value using the pre_site_transiet_ function.
/* wu_golden_ticket */
function wu_gold_ticket_return_true($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.