An invalid response was returned from Discourse","http_code":"","http_body":""}

תמיכה WordPress

סיכום מבוסס בינה מלאכותית

haydenjames reported that after updating the WP-Discourse plugin, their WordPress site lost connection to Discourse, showing an error: ‘An invalid response was returned from Discourse’ with empty HTTP code and body. Lilly suggested checking a similar issue thread on Meta Discourse. haydenjames later identified the root cause: an expired TLS certificate on their Discourse server, which they missed because they were using Cloudflare and had temporarily lowered SSL/TLS encryption mode from Strict to Full to bypass browser errors while traveling. To fix it, they switched Discourse to the stable branch by editing /var/discourse/containers/app.yml, ran sudo ./launcher rebuild app, and confirmed the certificate was valid again. They also verified their cert renewal cron job was active and manually forced a renewal to ensure future auto-renewal works. The issue was entirely self-inflicted, and they apologized and thanked the community for the help.

1

Updated the wp-discourse plugin, and it breaks things again. Error:

You are not connected to Discourse. Check that your connection settings are correct. If the issue persists, enable connection logs and check Logs.

Connection log:
[2025-10-08 13:29:13] connection.INFO: check_connection_status.failed_to_connect {“error”:“wpdc_response_error”,“message”:“An invalid response was returned from Discourse”,“http_code”:“”,“http_body”:“”}

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I’m at a lost I have not changed anything other than updating the WP-Discourse plugin, I just published a post as usual and noticed that it’s no longer connected.

2

looks similar to this:

3

Thanks for hinting me in the right direction. The issue was expired TLS cert. It had expired ~ 4 days ago.

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I use Cloudflare, so I didn’t catch that was the issue. I should have had a :light_bulb: but didn’t at the time, as I was traveling. So I just lowered CF’s SSL/TLS encryption mode from Strict to Full via mobile when the forums had ssl_browser error.

Anyway today I used the opportunity to switch to the stable branch. Edited /var/discourse/containers/app.yml to uncomment “version” and set it to stable:

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Then did:

sudo ./launcher rebuild app

Retested forum cert from the blog server:
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Works:

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So, in summary, this is completely my goof. Sorry and thanks!

Edit: checked the cron crontab -l (its there) and did a --force renewal, which was successful, so the autorenew should work the next time. :crossed_fingers: