HOWTO: Update WP Plugins without File Transfer Protocal

In the interest of security we moved many of our websites to a new server and found that plugins suddenly refused to update without File Transfer Protocal credentials. This was obviously fine when wanted to do the updates and knew the FTP credentials but presented a problem because we like to encourage our clients to perform routine maintenance to keep their sites up to date.  Obviously they are not going to know the FTP information.

This server happens to use setfacl to further control user access to the site folders. We don’t believe this is the problem.

WordPress does attempts to write a file to wp-content as a test for directory access. For some reason this test seemed to be failing.

We bypassed the test by adding the following line to wp-config.php:

define(‘FS_METHOD’, ‘direct’);

When the file write test was bypassed, the plugin installed without requiring the File Transfer Protocal credentials.

We hope this helps you as well!

For more information about what Acumen can do for your business, visit our Contact page.

For more information about FTP Credentials for WordPress, click on the link below:

https://help.vaultpress.com/ftp/