dbodonnell

@afragen, thanks for the link! It turned out that for me, all I needed to do was add
define(‘FS_METHOD’,’direct’); in my wp-config.php and I was able to install a new plugin without problem. It remains to be seen whether it will affect upgrades and new WP installs, though… One can hope!

I had hoped that modifying the share point using Server Admin to share the directory over FTP might do the trick, but no such luck. I consistently get an error:

Could not create directory. /Web/Fates.org/moc/wp-content/plugins/flickpress/

(this example is when trying to reinstall flickpress after an upgrade attempt blew the old version away).

If I manually FTP into the machine, I can create directories and files without trouble.

I’m certain it is not a permissions or ownership problem, either. I’ve gone so far as to chmod 777 directories and chown _www, myself, and every other user I could think of.

FWIW, I had to manually upgrade WP to WP 3.0. After doing so, I am still unable to automatically update anything. WP consistently fails trying to replace the existing files, even though I can manually replicate the steps (as far as I know) using plain old FTP.

@mmidyette, Check out their five-minute install. If you’re installing WP on a current version of Mac OS X, it should work flawlessly.

I’ve tried to make sense of the actual PHP code that comprises WP, but it’s way beyond my skills. The only thing I can think of is that maybe Apple made some bizarre change to FTP with a recent Software Update that makes it impossible to do what was working before.

If WP supported SFTP, this would likely be a non-issue, but I have no idea if it’s even on the developers’ radar.

I’ve set up separate instances of WordPress for each site that will have the blog; it’s really easy to do and WP doesn’t take much space. I *think* WP will run on the version of PHP you have on Server 10.4, but you’ll be better off upgrading if you can.

Once you set up a WP installation in the target Web site (which you’ll want to have already set up using Server Admin), the end user will manage the blog through the WP Web interface—unless you get stung by the same bug that I’ve experienced that prevents WP from updating itself, plugins, etc. You can manually install things, of course, and if your users are competent command line people it’s certainly doable. (Yes, you will need local user accounts for each blog, BTW; I find it simplest to just set them up with homes in /Users and create a symlink—not alias—to their Web site within their home folder, using ln -s <source location> <alias name>.)

I hope this helps!

Are we the only WordPress people running it on Mac OS X Server?

@miqrogroove: Ah. Thanks. I’ll go hunting now.

@esmi, there’s no Edit Image button anywhere on the Edit Media page. Switching to the default theme doesn’t make any difference.

@microgroove, I might have originally, but I don’t recall what they were. My server is running PHP 5.2.11, FWIW.

Thank you both for your help!