Can I install/update WordPress plugins without pro

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?

Answer 1

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.

Answer 2

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.

Answer 3

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.

Answer 4

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');

Answer 5

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 & /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.

Answer 6

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.