WP-Cron was timing out with a cURL error 28. Separately, WordPress Site Health reported a completely different endpoint — the REST API’s post-types route — timing out the exact same way. Two unrelated WordPress subsystems, cron and the REST API, were both failing. It would have been easy to treat them as two unrelated plugin problems and investigate each in isolation.
When Different Systems Fail the Same Way, Check the Shared Layer First
Field Note #284
⚡ Quick Fix (TL;DR)
The Culprit: The shared pattern mattered more than either individual endpoint: HTTP request, server waits, timeout, zero bytes received. Both were self-requests over HTTP failing identically, which pointed to a shared transport/loopback layer rather than two separate issues.
The Fix: Investigation was redirected toward the shared HTTP/loopback path rather than debugging WP-Cron and the REST API as two separate problems.
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