wordpress wants ftp information to update plugins

January 30th, 2009 by Lawrence David

if you get these errors when trying to have wordpress automatically update your plugins:

“To perform the requested action, connection information is required”

“Failed to connect to FTP Server“

try making sure that your webserver owns your wordpress directory. i fixed everything by going to the root of my wordpress directory and entering:

/home/wordpress/> sudo chown -R www-data:www-data *

Posted in Webserver | 12 Comments »

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12 Responses to “wordpress wants ftp information to update plugins”

on 31 Jan 2009 at 9:52 am alfredo

this works as long as you are in a Debian or Debian based installation.

The “webserver” user for Debian based distros is “www-data”

But for CentOS / RedHat / Fedora, the user is: “apache”

It is useful to note that it may vary.
on 21 Jun 2009 at 10:40 am surlyjake

Thanks.
if you run something other than debian, take a look at ‘top’ while apache is running to see what user account it uses.
on 10 Feb 2010 at 7:10 am Stephen

On MacOS X the user is _www.
on 04 Apr 2010 at 9:09 am Alinn

Great! My problem is solved.
Thanks a lot
on 18 Jun 2010 at 8:58 am allenm

Thanks a ton. I wish the docs/forums at wordpress.org had this information.
on 27 Jul 2010 at 2:54 am Jared

Be aware that while this method does make WP auto updates work, it can open a can of worms that will cause you frustration and possible security risks down the road.

There is a great article at nerdgrind.com that shows you a better way and illustrates the security risks you will find with other methods.

http://www.nerdgrind.com/wordpress-automatic-upgrade-plugin-failed-or-not-working/
on 18 Sep 2010 at 5:13 am Eric

http://www.nerdgrind.com/wordpress-automatic-upgrade-plugin-failed-or-not-working/
on 19 Feb 2011 at 8:08 am Internet Marketing For MLM

This nerdgrind link is brilliant – much more useful than the wordpress forum. Just wish I found it first!

WordPress Automatic Upgrade Plugin Failed or Not Working
on 17 Jun 2011 at 6:35 pm Great

Wonderful go through because I was unsure what to do and just found my personal remedy
on 30 Jan 2012 at 10:07 am Jarwain

FUCK YES
Thank you so much alfredo. Your tip finally made it work. :3
Now I gotta go restore default permissions somehow…
on 26 Feb 2012 at 11:22 pm Edwin

Thank you. It works like a charm on Ubuntu 11.10
on 11 Jul 2012 at 5:29 am ARPIT VIJAY

solution

download ftp client to import files directly to your server in wordpress directory

you can download from here

http://nchc.dl.sourceforge.net/project/filezilla/FileZilla_Client/3.5.3/FileZilla_3.5.3_win32.zip

there must be two things you want to import either themes or plugins

there are spesfic directories for both the things

wp-content/themes
wp-content/plugins

download and extract your plugin or theme which you want to install to your computer and simply drag and drop in the folders wp-content/themes and wp-content/plugins

you just need access these folders through filezilla by providing your ftp information

all done .

for any questions ask me on my company page

https://www.facebook.com/ITfoster

Did I get this wrong? Let me know!

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