WordPress could not establish a secure connection to www.ads-software.com

Both pages are incredibly slow, but eventually do work…Our instance of WordPress is on a closed network with no internet connection.

Your server, network or firewall is delaying outgoing http requests to www.ads-software.com. You need to add an exception to a firewall, router or check that the server allows outgoing https requests so that those requests are not delayed.

Thanks Mark. Even if this network has no access to the internet?

Even if this network has no access to the internet?

You say pages eventually load and updates work. If they eventually work, your network does have a connection to the internet as a whole. If they never work, then you don’t have a connection, and you need one to update. If you don’t want WordPress to check for updates and not make external https requests, use

define('WP_HTTP_BLOCK_EXTERNAL', true);

in wp-config.php

Sorry, I meant the pages eventually load. There’s no internet connection. Great, I’ll try that link in php-config. Thanks again.

wp-config.php, not php-config.php, which is not a WP file.

Typing too fast! That’s what I meant. Thanks so much for that, it’s worked a treat! ??