[bengrubb]

I see re http/https.

For what it’s worth, my wp_options table (named mdpm_options) is InnoDB and not myISAM.

I am on a GoDaddy shared hosting account, not a managed WordPress account, so I am thinking persistent object caching maybe isn’t the cause. It’s probably something to do with GoDaddy though.

[bengrubb]

Thank you!

Unrelated to the issue at hand (I think), I did notice The Newsletter Plugin was requesting http rather than https on this URL: http://www.thenewsletterplugin.com/wp-content/extensions.json
?ver=8.7.7

It does request https for get-license-data.php. Just thought I’d pass that on.

I’ll continue looking at what might be playing up on my web server.

Thanks again for your help.

[bengrubb]

I think you might be right. It would appear to be something to do with transients.

I installed Transients Manager and the below is what I see. Some very old, expired transients are in there and no fresh ones (with my code from above disabled). Why this is happening I do not know. I do have a few plugins installed. I use Godaddy, which may be doing some persistent object caching?
—-
newsletter_topbar
Edit | Delete
a:3:{s:5:”count”;s:1:”0″;s:5:”total”;N;s:4:”sent”;N;}
array
2025-02-25 13:25:29
Expired
Select newsletter_user_count
newsletter_user_count
Edit | Delete
244
numeric
2025-02-16 11:31:45
Expired
—-
These are the plugins I currently have that are active:
Sphere Core

Sphere Post Views

SSL Insecure Content Fixer

Transients Manager

Two Factor

URL Shortify

User Role Editor

WP Control

WP Mail SMTP

WPCode Lite

XML Sitemap & Google News

Akismet Anti-Spam: Spam Protection

Conditional Display Featured Image on Singular Posts and Pages

Donorbox Donation Form

Edit Author Slug

Elementor

Favicon by RealFaviconGenerator

Health Check & Troubleshooting

Limit Login Attempts Reloaded

Molongui Authorship

Newsletter

Newsletter – Addons Manager and Support

Newsletter – Instasend (BETA)

Newsletter – SMTP2GO

Performance Lab

Query Monitor

Redirecton

Responsive Lightbox & Gallery

Site Kit by Google

SmartMag Core

[bengrubb]

I updated the code to the following after accounting for different URL variables (as I was getting more licence issues on other The Newsletter Plugin pages:

add_filter( ‘pre_http_request’, ‘gsn_allow_newsletter_plugin_requests’, 10, 3 );

function gsn_allow_newsletter_plugin_requests( $pre, $args, $url ) {
if ( ! is_admin() ) {
return $pre;
}

// Allow all admin pages related to The Newsletter Plugin
if ( isset($_GET[‘page’]) && strpos($_GET[‘page’], ‘newsletter_’) === 0 ) {
return $pre;
}

// Block specific external domains (e.g. Newsletter license checks elsewhere)
if ( strpos( $url, ‘thenewsletterplugin.com’ ) !== false ) {
return new WP_Error( ‘request_blocked’, ‘Blocked external request to thenewsletterplugin.com’ );
}

return $pre;
}

—
so far so good

[bengrubb]

For what’s it’s worth, the below code successfully blocked the calls to those URLs outside of the The Newsletter Plugin pages in wp-admin, thereby increasing their load time.

Initially it caused the plugin to throw up messages about the licence check failing, but I think this may have been because of a conflict WP Code snippet I had enabled. Waiting to see what happens.

add_filter( ‘pre_http_request’, function( $pre, $args, $url ) {
if ( ! is_admin() ) return $pre;

// Allow if we’re on the newsletter plugin’s main admin page
if ( isset($_GET[‘page’]) && $_GET[‘page’] === ‘newsletter_main_index’ ) {
return $pre;
}

// Block external requests to thenewsletterplugin.com elsewhere in wp-admin
if ( strpos( $url, ‘thenewsletterplugin.com’ ) !== false ) {
return new WP_Error( ‘request_blocked’, ‘Blocked external request to thenewsletterplugin.com’ );
}

return $pre;
}, 10, 3 );

—

[Author]

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