Here’s a plugin I whipped up to stop the famous “An Unexpected HTTP Error occured during the API request” error message during some stuff in the admin. I made this because I didn’t want to hack the core files (like in this example, or the WP forum ). So,  if you get this message, it’s possible that the server you’re on is just a little too slow to retrieve some info from the wordpress.org site or the wordpress site is bogged down and it times out. The default for wordpress is 5 second, and usually it seems that it’s not enough. So here’s the plugin I made so you don’t have to hack the core http.php file. Hope it helps your installation. It pretty obvious to setup, just install as any normal plugin and activate.

Download DP HTTP Timeout Fix