3.9.4

Recommended if you have had trouble connecting to eBay. Everyone else is unaffected and waits for nothing.

The plugin now identifies itself

When it contacts our service it used to arrive as a generic WordPress client — indistinguishable from any other script on any other site. It now names itself and its version, so anyone inspecting the traffic can tell what it is, and so we have something to point at when asking for it to be recognised.

And it no longer arrives in bursts

Security software in front of our service watches for rapid, repeated requests, because that is the shape automated abuse takes. Several calls inside one second was enough to be treated that way — and the answer is a browser check that a plugin can never complete, so the connection fails permanently rather than occasionally.

Calls to our service are now spaced a couple of seconds apart.

The connection test was the worst offender: it fired four checks in about a second, so the tool built to diagnose this problem was provoking it. It now paces itself and takes a few seconds longer as a result.

If your store connects normally, nothing here slows anything down. The pause only happens after an attempt has already been interrupted.

If it still fails

Run the connection test once and send us the result rather than retrying repeatedly — repeated attempts are part of what triggers the block in the first place.