SOLVED: WordPress JetPack Error Updating Settings – FetchNetworkError

We run more than a dozen sites with nearly all of the configured the same way but one of our sites kept erroring out with “WordPress JetPack Error Updating Settings – FetchNetworkError” when we were trying to change settings in JetPack.

We suspect this error is related to our use of SSL via the CloudFlare CDN (Content Delivery Network) but were not able to prove it,

This is a very odd situation that were were not able to nail down, but we were able to work around the problem in one way and resolve the problem with a free plugin:

1 – Change JetPack Via WordPress.com

It appears that the WordPress site (hosted on GoDaddy and hooked to CloudFlare) will not talk to WordPress but WordPress will talk to the WordPress site.  This means you can easily make JetPack configuration changes through WordPress.com :

1. log into WordPress.com
2. expand MANAGE > SETTINGS
3. make the desire changes on the right pane

2 – Install Really Simple SSL

We found THIS WordPress support forum post from someone with the same problem and several people ‘fixed’ the issue by installing the Really Simple SSL plug in.

We installed the Really Simple SSL, agreed with the default settings an bingo everything started to work.

We use the CloudFlare SSL plugin on most of our sites so we were quite concerned Really Simple SSL would blow things up, but it works great.

After we made our desired changes, we deactivated Really Simple SSL just in case it had some problems, but we don’t think that is a necessary step.