Question

How do I enable Wordpress to update itself through its back end?

Posted September 30, 2013 69.5k views
On hosts where I didn't have the control over the server that I have now, I could update Wordpress' core, plugins, themes and the like from Wordpress' back end. Now, running multiple sites on virtual servers, if I try to update something, I get the following prompt: To perform the requested action, WordPress needs to access your web server. Please enter your FTP credentials to proceed. Under that are boxes for the Hostname, FTP User, and FTP Password, and then radio buttons for FTP or FTP (SSL). I've tried the IP address of my server, the name of my server, 'localhost', and the domain name of the site I'm trying to update - none of which work. I'm able to log in to FTP (SSL) with Cyberduck with user/password when pointing to the server's IP, but it seems Wordpress doesn't know what to do with that. Could someone help me fix this problem?
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ethan
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ethan
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  • greengablesfan33 December 13, 2017
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    I don’t even have an FTP server, as I’ve soly been using Win SCP port 22 to upload and download files using explorer mode. I’m running an Ubuntu 16.04 SSD VPS, which would probably translate to a droplet in DO terms.
    I tried adding # adduser wordpressuser www-data

    chown wordpressuser:www-data -R /var/www/html

    reboot

    The same thing still kept happening.

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25 answers
pablo October 1, 2013
Bingo! Permissions problems, indeed!

Easy fix, my friend:

sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www
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kamaln7 September 30, 2013
Thanks, ethan.

As far as I know, apache should be running as 'www-data'. Try allowing www-data to write to /var/www/sitename.com/: 

sudo chgrp -R www-data /var/www/sitename.com

sudo chmod -R g+w /var/www/sitename.com

find /var/www/sitename.com -type d -exec chmod g+s {} \;


The first command changes the group owernship of every file in /var/www/sitename.com to be owned by the group 'www-data'. The second command allows members of the file's group to write to the file (+w). The third command searches for directories in /var/www/sitename.com and sets setgid so that new subdirectories/subfiles are also owned by the group 'www-data'.

Please let me know if that helps.

Thanks.
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  • ivanter July 27, 2015

    In addition to the above permission settings, I also had to add this line to wp-config.php:

    define( 'FS_METHOD', 'direct' );

    The two things together solved this problem.

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pablo September 30, 2013
When you installed WordPress, did you follow a guide? If so, which one?

If not, give us a few more details to be able to better assist, e.g. OS and webserver?
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kamaln7 September 30, 2013
I recommend not using FTP but allowing Wordpress to write the files directly instead.

What OS are you running and did you follow an article on installing Wordpress?
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ethan September 30, 2013
I'll see if I can give you a good idea of what I did. I installed LAMP on Ubuntu 12.04.

I eventually found out I could put multiple sites on one droplet, so that was the first step. This is the guide I followed for the Wordpress installs, at least in terms of /sites-available/ and /sites-enabled/ :
https://www.digitalocean.com/community/articles/how-to-set-up-multiple-wordpress-sites-on-a-single-ubuntu-vps

Now, it should be mentioned that the sites I was installing were migrated from other hosts, and as I was installing them, I wasn't sure how to set up the DNS stuff with DO.
I didn't install Wordpress through the command line, but after I got the SSH user set up, I used FTP to upload all the my files to the directories I wanted them to go into (/var/www/sitename.com/), and Sequel Pro to install their databases. Then I used this script (http://interconnectit.com/products/search-and-replace-for-wordpress-databases/) to make sure that all the instances of the old domain in the database had been updated with serialized instances of the new domain.

So far so good, as everything is working without a hitch. The only thing that isn't is the Wordpress updater. Kamal, I'm with you - I really don't want to FTP in and upload new files myself all the time. I'd rather let Wordpress write the files itself - but for whatever reason, when I ask it to, that's when it says, "To perform the requested action, WordPress needs to access your web server. Please enter your FTP credentials to proceed."

Is there any more information you need?
How To Set Up Multiple WordPress Sites on a Single Ubuntu VPS
by Justin Ellingwood
WordPress is a popular content management system (CMS) that can be used to quickly launch blogs and websites. In this guide, we will discuss how to launch two separate blogs, each associated with their own domains, from one VPS.
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ethan September 30, 2013
Kamal,

Thanks for your reply. I did all those things, and I am still seeing the when I try to update plugins or a theme from within Wordpress:

http://imgur.com/prhBooY
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ethan September 30, 2013
...I've tried the server's IP, the server's name, my domain name, localhost...

None of them seem to work. I'm pretty stumped.
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pablo October 1, 2013
This definitely sounds like a permissions problem. Can you paste onto Pastie the output of ls -la /var/www; and provide us w/the link?
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ethan October 1, 2013
http://pastebin.com/tKyWZq2w
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ethan October 1, 2013
Thanks for the help guys, like I said - I am so stumped.
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