Disable Outbound Web Requests

Question

I've setup wordpress on AWS. I want to reduce as much network traffic as possible. What services/jobs do I need to disable in Wordpress?

Answer 1

Defining WP_HTTP_BLOCK_EXTERNAL constant (wp-config.php is good place to do this) would kill all outgoing network requests, other than those for hostnames, defined in WP_ACCESSIBLE_HOSTS.

See source for details, doesn't seem to be documented in Codex.

Answer 2

If you want to see all network traffic from your site check out the Core Control plugin: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/core-control/ You can also use this to permit or shut down different requests and cron jobs.

Note, by defining WP_HTTP_BLOCK_EXTERNAL in your wp-config.php this blocks all external requests. If you want to enable WordPress update checks you will need to include api.wordpress.org in WP_ACCESSIBLE_HOSTS.