Some trackbacks timeout due to short timeout period

[gnaka08]

A trackback by WordPress to an external blog can timeout without any network congestion. WordPress 2.8.1 timeouts if it has not received any response from the receiving system for 4 seconds although some blog system can take more than 10 seconds to accept a trackback. If the trackback fails, WordPress keeps trying to resend the trackback every time the user posts a new entry, but it never succeeds and WordPress keeps resending for ever. It annoys the blog owner whose blog the WordPress is trying to send the trackback to.

I propose that function trackback in wp-includes/comment.php should be modified for the timeout period to be extended from 4 seconds (e.g. to 30 seconds).

This modification is different from one appeared in ticket #8665.

[gnaka08]

The timeout in MT4.261 seems to be 60 seconds by default (HTTPTimeout configuration variable). The documentation claims that it is 10 seconds somehow, but lib/MT/Core.pm reads as 60 seconds to me.

​http://www.movabletype.org/documentation/appendices/config-directives/httptimeout.html

[gnaka08]

Japanese-localized documentation tells that it has been changed to 60 seconds since version 3.3.

​http://www.movabletype.jp/documentation/appendices/config-directives/httptimeout.html

[janeforshort]

Punting due to lack of testing and community traction.

[jeremyfelt]

I think the timeout is working fine here and there is no need to increase the default. One could theoretically use a filter like http_request_args to up the timeout time when necessary. We could also add a filter to the arguments that trackback() pushes to the HTTP request.

Suggesting wontfix for the timeout, though something managing the upper limit of trackback attempts for a URL could be interesting.

[gnaka08]

Since I wrote about this problem on my blog in 2009, some users have reported that they experienced the same problem. They all had felt sorry for the annoyances to owners to whose blog they inadvertently sent many trackbacks. This is a serious issue because it involves a responsibility to others.

[chriscct7]

We should match the timeout to 10 seconds

[wonderboymusic]

In 33948:

Bump the timeout in trackback() to 10 seconds (from 4) to match wp_xmlrpc_server::pingback_ping() and prevent trackback timeouts.

Props gnaka08 for the initial patch.
Fixes #10414.