3.7 Search for Plugins in CP gives "unexpected error…"

Try searching after deactivating all currently installed plugins as one of the plugins can cause such errors.

What plugins do you have installed?

Would it matter if a plugin is installed, but not activated? Yes, I did deactivate all and even changed themes, but got the same error.

Yes, sometimes inactive plugins can also cause troubles.

Can you rename the plugins folder (at your hosting account) by adding something like -HOLD and try again?

I’ve just deleted a few plugins that were installed, but not active and will try once more.

Failing that, I’ll try temporarily renaming the plugin folder, as it’s been suggested, and try that too. I’ll be back!

Neither worked. ??

Same thing for me on a new install. As soon as I upgraded to 3.7 I got that same error. Reinstalled WP ( 3.5 I think — via my hosts auto installer) and could search and add plugins. As soon as I upgraded to 3.7 again, got the same error.

This sounds like it’s possibly due to a issue with your server being able to make outgoing HTTPS requests, so lets get to the bottom of it together..

I’ve just thrown together a quick plugin to run a few tests to verify if HTTPS communication is possible on your server.

You can download it from here: https://dd32.id.au/uploads/2013/10/https-debugger.zip
It adds a page under Dashboard -> HTTPS Debugger

If you could post back with any Failure/Warning/Info lines from the plugin, that’d be appreciated so I can verify if it’s SSL related or something else.

If you’d like to send me the entire text of the page (If there’s many errors, or the output is too long to paste here), you can also do that, my email is: dion at, wordpress dot org.

I love how on every thread people are blaming what plugins are installed yet this problem is happening to a massively growing number of people who have upgraded to 3.7. I’m willing to bet there’s a problem with 3.7, not our plugins directories…

The question is: How soon will a fix be rolled out?

Plugins are often a cause of problems. In this case, have you tried Dion’s plugin to help troubleshoot this problem?

Dion: I have installed and activated your plugin. Not sure how to get what you’re looking for, however. Am I supposed to run something? Jack

Dion thanks for the help… I installed your plug in and received the following message:
[PASS]: Your WordPress install claims to support HTTPS Connections
[PASS]: Checking that the HTTPS Root Certificate bundle exists and is accessible
[PASS]: cURL is installed and supports SSL communication, cURL Details: version_number=466688; age=3; features=49821; ssl_version_number=0; version=7.31.0; host=armv5tel-unknown-linux-gnueabi; ssl_version=OpenSSL/1.0.1e; libz_version=1.2.8; protocols=dict,file,ftp,ftps,gopher,http,https,imap,imaps,pop3,pop3s,rtsp,scp,sftp,smtp,smtps,telnet,tftp
[FAIL]: OpenSSL is not installed
[PASS]: Checking if stream_socket_client exists
[FAIL]: Checking if openssl_x509_parse exists
[PASS]: Verifying api.www.remarpro.com resolves correctly.
[PASS]: [cURL] Communication with www.remarpro.com suceeded, it took 0.706 seconds
[INFO]: PHP Version: 5.4.16

So, I just hit upon this error while trying to setup a fresh wp 3.7 for a client.
My own blog, on my server running 3.6 is totally fine with it.

And here’s the output of HTTPS Debugger –

[PASS]: Your WordPress install claims to support HTTPS Connections
    [PASS]: Checking that the HTTPS Root Certificate bundle exists and is accessible
    [PASS]: cURL is installed and supports SSL communication, cURL Details: version_number=466688; age=3; features=49692; ssl_version_number=0; version=7.31.0; host=x86_64-pc-linux-gnu; ssl_version=OpenSSL/1.0.1e; libz_version=1.2.7; protocols=dict,file,ftp,ftps,gopher,http,https,imap,imaps,pop3,pop3s,rtsp,smtp,smtps,telnet,tftp
    [PASS]: OpenSSL is installed. OpenSSL 1.0.1e 11 Feb 2013 268439647
    [PASS]: Checking if stream_socket_client exists
    [PASS]: Checking if openssl_x509_parse exists
    [PASS]: Verifying api.www.remarpro.com resolves correctly.
    [PASS]: [Streams] Communication with www.remarpro.com suceeded, it took 0.862 seconds
    [PASS]: [cURL] Communication with www.remarpro.com suceeded, it took 0.842 seconds
    [INFO]: PHP Version: 5.5.4-pl0-gentoo

So I downgraded Word press to 3.6.1 and resolved the problem in the control panel.

Now I can use the links from the plugins tab in the control panel, but wordpress jetpack plugin still can not communicate with SSL and OpenSSL appears broken in the repository (won’t install with “pacman -Su openssl”) ??

Oh well. I wonder if I build OpenSSL from source or pull from a user or test repository if it might install (?).

So, from the above posts I gather there’s no work-around (searching for WP plugins using vers 3.7) other than to downgrade, or manually upload them. At least until further updates are available?