Can I install update WordPress plugins without providing FTP access

Question

I am using WordPress on my live server which only uses SFTP using an SSH key     I want to install and upgrade plugins  but it appears that you are required to enter your FTP login to install the plugins  Is there a way to install and upgrade plugins by manually uploading the files instead of having WordPress handle the entire process

User · Answer

Just a quick change to wp-config php  define  FS METHOD   direct      That   s it  enjoy your wordpress updates without ftp   Alternate Method      There are hosts out there that will prevent this method from working   to ease your WordPress updating   Fortunately  there is another way to   keep this pest from prompting you for your FTP user name and password       Again  after the MYSQL login declarations in your wp-config php file    add the following    define  FTP HOST    localhost    define  FTP USER    yourftpusername    define  FTP PASS    yourftppassword

User · Answer

Usually you can just upload your plugin to the wp-content plugins directory  If you don t have access to this directory via SFTP I m afraid you may be stuck

User · Answer

Yes  directly install the plugin in WordPress    Copy the plugin folder and paste in WordPress plugin folder  go to admin side   test wp-admin  then after go to on the plugin link and check the name of the plugin  Activate the plugin so Install the plugin easily    other Option   create the zip file for the plugin code  go to admin side   test wp-admin  then after go to on the plugin link and then click on the add new then browse the plugin zip folder and install the plugin then come out the option activate plugin so so do activate plugin and activate plugin

User · Answer

Just wanted to add that you must NEVER set the wp-content permission or permission of any folder to 777    This is what I had to do to   1  I set the ownership of the wordpress folder  recursively  to the apache user  like so     chown -R apache wordpress   2  I changed the group ownership of the wordpress folder  recursively  to the apache group  like so     chgrp -R apache wordpress   3  give owner full privilege to the directory  like so     chmod u wrx wordpress    And that did the job  My wp-content folder has 755 permissions  btw   TL DR version     chown -R apache apache wordpress   chmod u wrx wordpress

User · Answer

The answer from stereointeractive covers all the options  Just wanted to mention an alternate way of using FTP  I m guessing that the reason you are not allowing FTP access is for security  One way to address those security concerns is to run your FTP server listening only on 127 0 0 1   This allows you to use FTP from inside WordPress and you will be able to install plugins while not exposing it to the rest of the world  This can also be applied to other popular web applications such as Joomla  and Drupal  This is what we do with our BitNami appliances and cloud servers and works quite well

User · Answer

You can get it very easily by typing the following command on command promt  sudo chown -R www-data www-data your folder name   or copy  amp  paste the following code in your wp-config php file    define  FS METHOD    direct      Where  your folder name  is the folder where your WordPress is installed inside this folder

User · Answer

Try this Check whether the correct permission is given to wp-content folder   Edit the  wp-config php add  the following line   define  FS METHOD    direct      chmod the  wp-content  directory to www-data for full access   Now try installing the plugin

User · Answer

If you re on Ubuntu  a quick solution that worked for me is giving ownership to the Apache user  www-data by default  like so   cd your wordpress directory sudo chown -R www-data wp-content sudo chmod -R 755 wp-content

User · Answer

In wp-config php add define  FS METHOD    direct    Make server writable the directories wp-content   wp-content plugins   Install the plugin  copy the plugin dir into the wp-content plugins dir     Worked on version 3 2 1

User · Answer

The only reason by which WordPress won t allow you to upload any plugin via WordPress admin dashboard when you don t got permission to write on the  wp-content directory  Remember that your wordpress directory  wp-content requires 0755 permission level   There are various ways to change a folder s permission level    Changing file permissions using cPanel   Go to File Manager at open the public HTML folder where your wordpress website is supposed to be  or open the site root directory if your website is in some other folder  In your WordPress root directory navigate towards wp-content folder  at the end of wp-content folder row the very last box carries file permissions for this folder  Make sure to edit the folder permission level to 0755  and you are done    Changing file permissions using SSH terminal   In your terminal locate the root of WordPress site which in my case was  var www html so to move into WordPress root directory enter the following command   cd  var www html    Now you are in WordPress root directory where the required folder  wp-content is located  So to change the file permissions type the following command   sudo chmod wp-content 755    This will change your  wp-content directory file permission to 0755    Now you won t get error message of uploading wordpress plugins via FTP

User · Answer

I saw a lot of people recommending to set permission to 777  I had same problem like 2 days ago and all I did was  add this to wp-content  define  FS METHOD    direct      and      set permission to 775 for plugin folder   This solved my problem of asking FTP access login password   Before that  I had to add plugin manually by adding  zip file to plugin folder and then go to wp-admin plugins and had to installed it

User · Answer

Try this  1  In the wp-config php add define  FS METHOD    direct     2  Set the wp-content directory to 777 for writable   3  Now install the plugin

User · Answer

Resurrecting an old thread  but there s a fantastic new plugin called SSH SFTP Updater Support that adds in SFTP capabilities without needing to edit your wp-config php file  Also  Wordpress s SFTP implementation relies on some somewhat obscure PHP modules that are often not enabled on servers  this plugin packages a different PHP SFTP plugin so you don t have to configure anything on the Apache side    I had run into tons of problems getting SFTP support to work - this plugin solved all of them and is just fantastic

User · Answer

The best way to install plugin using SSH is WPCLI    Note that  SSH access is mandatory to use WP CLI commands  Before using it check whether the WP CLI is installed at your hosting server or machine    How to check   wp --version   It will show the wp cli version installed    If not installed  how to install it    Before installing WP-CLI  please make sure the  environment meets the minimum requirements   UNIX-like environment  OS X  Linux  FreeBSD  Cygwin   limited support in Windows environment  PHP 5 4 or later WordPress 3 7 or later  Versions older than the latest WordPress release may have degraded functionality  If above points satisfied  please follow the steps   Reference URL   WPCLI  curl -O https   raw githubusercontent com wp-cli builds gh-pages phar wp-cli phar   download the wpcli phar    php wp-cli phar --info   check whether the phar file is working    chmod  x wp-cli phar   change permission   sudo mv wp-cli phar  usr local bin wp   move to global folder   wp --info   to check the installation     Now WP CLI is  ready to install    Now you can install any plugin that is available in WordPress org by using the following commands     wp install plugin plugin-slug wp delete plugin plugin-slug wp deactivate plugin plugin-slug   NOTE   wp cli can install only those plugin which is available in wordpress org

User · Answer

Here is a simple method    Execute following commands   This will enable your mod rewrite module for Apache   sudo a2enmod rewrite   This Command will change the owner of the folder to www-data   sudo chown -R www-data  Wordpress Folder Location    After You executing above commands you can install any themes without FTP

User · Answer

Two steps    Add below code in wp-config file  define  FS METHOD    direct     We need to give full permission to the folder like if server connected with SSH then paste below code in terminal and make sure you are inside on website folder and then run below code  sudo chmod -R 775 wp-content plugins    or give full permission to website folder   sudo chown -R www-data www-data website folder

User · Answer

You can add following in wp-config php define  METHOD   direct     Here is a youtube video that explaining how to do it  https   youtu be pq4QRp4427c

User · Answer

WordPress 2 7 lets you upload a zip file directly  there s a link at the bottom of the plugins page  -- no FTP access needed   This is a new feature in 2 7  and it works for plugins only  not themes yet

User · Answer

Change from php mod to fastcgi with cgi  amp  SuEXEC enabled  ISPConfig users   Works for me  If don t work  try to change wp-content to 775 as root or sudo user  chmod -R 775   wp-content  Then Add to wp-config php  define  FS METHOD    direct     Good Luck

User · Answer

Add the following code to wp-config  define  FS METHOD    direct      FS METHOD forces the filesystem method  It should only be direct  ssh2  ftpext  or ftpsockets  Generally  you should only change this if you are experiencing update problems  If you change it and it doesn t help  change it back remove it  Under most circumstances  setting it to  ftpsockets  will work if the automatically chosen method does not    Primary Preference   direct  forces it to use Direct File I O requests from within PHP  this is fraught with opening up security issues on poorly configured hosts  This is chosen automatically when appropriate    Secondary Preference   ssh2  is to force the usage of the SSH PHP Extension if installed   3rd Preference   ftpext  is to force the usage of the FTP PHP Extension for FTP Access  and finally   4th Preference   ftpsockets  utilises the PHP Sockets Class for FTP Access  For more information visit  http   codex wordpress org Editing wp-config php WordPress Upgrade Constants

User · Answer

Method 1  You can set this   1   in wp-config php you need to write this lines    define  FS METHOD    direct       Note  put this after define   DB CHARSET    utf8mb4        set wp-content permission or permission recursively 775 full permission you can give it via filezilla  write click on directory   permissions  check read-write and execute and also check Recurse into subdirectories   Method 2    or You can also set this   define  FTP HOST    localhost    define  FTP USER    yourftpusername    define  FTP PASS    yourftppassword

User · Answer

I also recommend the SSH SFTP Updater Support plugin  Just solved all my problems too   especially in regards to getting plugins to delete through the admin  Just install it in the usual way  and the next time you re prompted by WordPress for FTP details  there ll be extra fields for you to copy paste your private SSH key or upload your PEM file   Only problem I have is in getting it to remember the key  tried both methods   Don t like the idea of having to find and enter it every time I need to delete a plugin  But at least it s a solid fix for now

User · Answer

Please add define  FS METHOD   direct    in wo-config php

User · Answer

You can have fileZilla and use FTP Account to update plugins and themes  Or you can just login to Cpanel and access wordpress folder and then you can update theme by unzipping theme or plugin

User · Answer

Yes you can do it    You need to add   define  METHOD   direct      in your wpconfig   But this method won t be preferable because it has security voilances   Thanks

User · Answer

open wp-config php file and add the following line   define  FS METHOD    direct     this is working for me    Thanks

User · Answer

setting up a ftp or even an SFTP connection or chmod 777 are bad ways to go for anything other than a local environment  Opening even an SFTP method introduces more security risks that are not needed   what is needed is a writeable permission to  wp-content uploads  amp   wp-content plugins  by the owner of those directories   linux ls -la will show you ownership    Default apache user that runs is www-data   chmod 777 allows any user on the machine to edit those file  not just the apache php thread user   SFTP if you are not already using it  will introduce another point of possible failure from an external source  Whereas you only need access by the local user running the apache php process to complete the objective   Didn t see anyone making these points  so I thought I would offer this info to help with our constant WP security issues online

User · Answer

WordPress will only prompt you for your FTP connection information while trying to install plugins or a WordPress update if it cannot write to  wp-content directly  Otherwise  if your web server has write access to the necessary files  it will take care of the updates and installation automatically  This method does not require you to have FTP SFTP or SSH access  but it does require your to have specific file permissions set up on your webserver   It will try various methods in order  and fall back on FTP if Direct and SSH methods are unavailable   https   github com WordPress WordPress blob 4 2 2 wp-admin includes file php L912  WordPress will try to write a temporary file to your  wp-content directory  If this succeeds  it compares the ownership of the file with its own uid  and if there is a match it will allow you to use the  direct  method of installing plugins  themes  or updates   Now  if for some reason you do not want to rely on the automatic check for which filesystem method to use  you can define a constant   FS METHOD  in your wp-config php file  that is either  direct    ssh    ftpext  or  ftpsockets  and it will use that method  Keep in mind that if you set this to  direct   but your web user  the username under which your web server runs  does not have proper write permissions  you will receive an error   In summary  if you do not want to  or you cannot  change permissions on wp-content so your web server has write permissions  then add this to your wp-config php file   define  FS METHOD    direct        Permissions explained here     http   codex wordpress org Updating WordPress Automatic Update http   codex wordpress org Changing File Permissions

User · Answer

In order to enable the use of SSH2 for your updates and theme uploads  you have to generate your SSH keys and have the PHP SSH module installed  Then WordPress will detect that you have SSH2 available and you ll see a different option  SSH2  displayed when doing an upload upgrade   1   Make sure you have the PHP module installed for debian it is   sudo apt-get install libssh2-php   2   Generate SSH keys  adding a passphrase is optional   ssh-keygen cd     ssh cp id rsa pub authorized keys   3   Change the permission so that WordPress can access those keys   cd   chmod 755  ssh chmod 644  ssh     Now you ll get the SSH2 option when doing an upload upgrade plugin    4   For added ease you can setup the defaults in your wp-config php and this will pre-populate the SSH credentials in the WordPress upload window   define  FTP PUBKEY    home  lt user gt   ssh id rsa pub    define  FTP PRIKEY    home  lt user gt   ssh id rsa    define  FTP USER    lt user gt     define  FTP PASS   passphrase    define  FTP HOST   domain com      The  passphrase  is optional  if you don t setup a passphrase during ssh-kengen  then don t add it in wp-config php  This solved my issue  And I didn t have to do the chown at all  But I have seen this method referenced in other places   References    http   wp tutsplus com articles tips-articles quick-tip-upgrade-your-wordpress-site-via-ssh  http   codex wordpress org Editing wp-config php Enabling SSH Upgrade Access

User · Answer

As stated before none of the perm fixes work anymore  You need to change the perms accordingly AND put the following in your wp-config php   define  FS METHOD    direct

User · Answer

It is possible to use SFTP or SSH to auto update Plugins in WordPress  but you need to have ssh2 pecl extension  You can find out how to do it  using the following tutorial

User · Answer

We use SFTP with SSH  on both our development and live servers   and I have tried  not too hard though  to use the WordPress upload feature  I agree with Toby  upload your plugin s  to the wp-content plugins directory and then activate them from there

User · Answer

Execute the following code in terminal  sudo chown -R www-data  var www   For further detail visit  Wordpress on Ubuntu install plugins without FTP access

[wordpress] Can I install/update WordPress plugins without providing FTP access?

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