[Plugin: W3 Total Cache] Plugin will not install/update without (s)FTP informati

To test, I have done the following:

• Uninstall W3TC
• Delete all W3TC files from the server
• chgrp/chown wp-content to apache
• chmod -R 777 wp-content

With a fresh copy of 0.9.2.7 on the server, I click the Install link for the button. It tells me that it doesn’t have permissions to write the files/folders to wp-content.

Here are the steps followed to find the problem:

1. line 158 – inc/functions/activation.php – attempting to make required folders in wp-content
2. line 229 – inc/functions/activation.php – function for creating folders
3. line 232 – inc/functions/activation.php – global $wp_filesystem is empty, is not an object
4. line 233 – inc/functions/activation.php – assumes that $wp_filesystem is an object and tries to make a folder, unfortunately $wp_filesystem is not an object and ! forces a silent failure

Hopefully this helps the W3TC author find the bug. I asked you to contact me directly so I could help, but was ignored.