## Description of the need
We are seeing a new frustrated Forum post regarding the failure to get update data (https://forum.backdropcms.org/forum/not-possible-check-upgrades). This seems to come up regularly.
I experienced this issue and the problem was that Backdrop uses SSL to check for updates, and my local certificate used by stream_socket_client to make this socket connection with the server was expired. See https://forum.backdropcms.org/forum/issues-checking-updates-localhost
Other posters found similar solutions related to expired certificates. I think this is not uncommon.
## Proposed solution
Drupal 7, to this date, uses an HTTP connection to obtain the same module update information. Backdrop's defines the constant `UPDATE_DEFAULT_URL` as `https://updates.backdropcms.org/release-history`. Drupal 7 `http://updates.drupal.org/release-history`.
It seems like D8/9 does use SSL to fetch update data, but provides a `update_fetch_with_http_fallback` fallback option in settings.php.
It'd be great to have this feature added to Backdrop.
This is the D8/9 doc explanation for this setting:
```php
/**
* Fallback to HTTP for Update Manager and for fetching security advisories.
*
* If your site fails to connect to updates.drupal.org over HTTPS (either when
* fetching data on available updates, or when fetching the feed of critical
* security announcements), you may uncomment this setting and set it to TRUE to
* allow an insecure fallback to HTTP. Note that doing so will open your site up
* to a potential man-in-the-middle attack. You should instead attempt to
* resolve the issues before enabling this option.
*/
```
GitHub Issue #:
5455
Recent comments
I think given the warning on the source site: At this time, if your new project can afford to require PHP 5.5+, which it should, please use PHP's native password_hash() /...
July 31, 2025
I did a very quick test and if the Display format of the webform submission value is HTML then it appears but if plain text then it doesn't, so something is included regardless of if empty when...
"Hide rewriting if empty" has no effect
Just to clarify it appears that the item: Fix Search for "On the Web" module, is about the search on backdropcms.org at https://backdropcms.org/modules
July 31, 2025