[Steven Zahm]

@ Steve

Well, that’s unfortunate! There’s nothing I can do about that. Since I dev for WP, guess that obvious, I use the WordPress API’s. In this case I use wp_remote_get() function and then WordPress does it’s best using various methods to try to make the remote request.

I suspect since PHP reports that cURL is available WordPress tries to use it but times out because the host is actually blocking it.

Perhaps the host should change the server config to report that cURL is not available and WordPress might try another method.

Honestly, I’d have to dig deep into the WordPress API to learn exactly what it defaults to and what the fallbacks are … but the sum of it is, that I can not simply switch out cURL for ccurl as the host suggests. The only way to do that would be to edit the core WordPress files directly which is a big nono because it can break all sorts of things. And the changes would be lost anytime you update WP too. Just not a good practice. The only alternative I would have would to to completely write my own API for remote connections but that is extremely overtkill since WP already provides one.

My suggestion … request that your host open curl for you.

Hope that helps!

ps. A quick scan of the WordPress code… version 4.6 uses wp_remote_get() 14 times for internal functions so my guess is unless the host “whitelisted” those specifically somehow, those are failing too.