There was an error returning the category list from Discourse

[Brandon007 (Brandon)]

I just updated Discourse to the latest and greatest last night. This morning when I went to publish a new Wordpress post, I receive this error.

I was able to publish the post from Wordpress to the forum, but not with the proper topic. I can add a tag and it will show up within the post on the forum.

Looking in the logs I see this:

[2023-05-12 16:54:03] webhook_topic.ERROR: update_topic_content.response_body_error
[2023-05-12 16:54:52] webhook_topic.ERROR: update_topic_content.response_body_error

Is this a bug with the latest version, any ideas?

[pfaffman (Jay Pfaffman)]

Is wp-discourse also up to date? (I don’t use it myself, so this is the most useful idea I’ll have to offer)

[Brandon007 (Brandon)]

It sure is.

So we’re all on the same page:

Discourse: 3.1.0.beta4
WP-Discourse: Version 2.4.9

[Brandon007 (Brandon)]

I wanted to provide an update on this. I turned on logging for everything and took a closer look and found this error.

2023-05-19 16:11:08] connection.INFO: check_connection_status.failed_to_connect {"error":"wpdc_response_error","message":"An invalid response was returned from Discourse","http_code":403,"http_body":"{\"errors\":[\"You are not permitted to view the requested resource. The API username or key is invalid.\"],\"error_type\":\"invalid_access\"}”}

This stood out to me, “The API username or key is invalid.”

Somehow, my main system user ID changed after the update I recently did… I had previously set it to a custom name, something other than “system.” However, when I went back in and took a look, I see the system user had defaulted back to “system.” So I changed it back to the custom name I had and everything is working.

I know I didn’t change it back to the default name of “system” and I’m the only person with access. I think this was a bug with the latest and greatest update. All is well now though.