WordPress back-end very slow

Hello,

Purchased the developer package yesterday and was going through the settings and options today when I noticed the WordPress admin area slowed to an absolute crawl, something like 10 to 20 seconds for moving between the different side menu options. I installed Query Monitor [link] and noticed that the Updraft Plus plugin was running HTTP GET requests, didn’t really know why this was slowing everything down so I deleted the plugin and the admin area returned to normal (~0.1 to 0.4 seconds). (I unfortunately didn’t look very hard at the specific problem after seeing it was Updraft, and haven’t had the 10+ second problem since…so not sure what was causing the major issue.)

I reinstalled the plugin hoping it was a botched install, but it’s still slowing the back-end down (although only by a second or two). For some reason (feature or bug?) Updraft is running HTTP GET requests on any admin page (under “Settings” only, Wordfence for example has its own menu and doesn’t have this issue ) with a plugin installed and at the very least doubling the load time of these pages, and sometimes up to a tenfold increase. Below is the HTTP request and call stack information from going to Settings -> General (WPS hide login plugin settings are on this page).

HTTP Request
GET
(https://)updraftplus.com/plugin-info/
?checking_for_updates=1
&installed_version=2.12.20.22
&udm_action=updateinfo
&sid=(snip)
&su=(snip)
&sn=(snip)
&slug=updraftplus
&e=[myemail]%40gmail.com
&si2=(snip)

Call Stack
WP_Http->request()
wp-includes/class-http.php:227
WP_Http->get()
wp-includes/class-http.php:594
wp_remote_get()
wp-includes/http.php:170
PluginUpdateChecker_3_0->requestInfo()
content/plugins/updraftplus/udaddons/plugin-updates/plugin-update-checker.php:189
PluginUpdateChecker_3_0->requestUpdate()
content/plugins/updraftplus/udaddons/plugin-updates/plugin-update-checker.php:262
PluginUpdateChecker_3_0->checkForUpdates()
content/plugins/updraftplus/udaddons/plugin-updates/plugin-update-checker.php:350
UpdraftPlusAddons2->admin_menu()
content/plugins/updraftplus/udaddons/updraftplus-addons.php:252
do_action(‘admin_menu’)
wp-includes/plugin.php:524

Time: 0.30 (total page load time was 0.56, this is one of the lower ones)

Possibly unrelated but there is also a PHP error on the settings page for Updraft:

unlink([*removed servername]content/updraft/binziptest/test.zip): No such file or directory

Call Stack
unlink()
content/plugins/updraftplus/class-updraftplus.php:1065
UpdraftPlus->find_working_bin_zip()
content/plugins/updraftplus/admin.php:3130
UpdraftPlus_Admin->settings_expertsettings()
content/plugins/updraftplus/admin.php:2559
UpdraftPlus_Admin->settings_output()
wp-includes/plugin.php:524
do_action(‘settings_page_updraftplus’)
wp-admin/admin.php:222

I was just wondering if the HTTP GET requests are normal, or if there is some way to turn them off (hard to go back to 1+ sec load times when you’ve gotten used to 0.1/0.2). There seems to be a variance in times, right now they’re only taking 0.13 sec (total 0.23 sec) but other times they can be 0.8 sec or more. If I have to live with it that’s okay, just hoping the 10s to 20s times were a one time thing. (also not sure if this is related, but when I went to updraftplus.com to check the forums for solutions and re-downloading the plugin the site was extremely slow, at least 15-20 seconds for each page. I checked other sites any they all loaded fine. After a while it went back to normal, around the same time I was testing the new install, did the main site experience some kind of issue earlier?)

Thanks for any help you can give me,

Kyle