epor

This problem of being unable to install plugins and update the wordpress core automatically has been bothering me for a while now. Inspired by the upgrade to 3.0.5, this thread, a bunch of other webpages that were mostly unhelpful, I think I have finally found a setup that works for me.

Adding define(‘FS_METHOD’,’direct’); to wp-config.php seems to be a critical first step to get both to work. This alone seems to get plugin installs working correctly, but not the core updates.

The only way I have been able to get the core updates to work is to change the group ownership of all of the files in the wordpress directory to the OS X webserver group, which is _www. This can be done with the terminal command replacing YourUserName with your user name currently assigned to the files:
sudo chown -R YourUserName:_www *

Then, read, write, and execute permission for all of the files and folders need to be given to the webserver via the file group permission. This can be done with the terminal command:
sudo chmod -R 775 *

This makes sense as the webserver is installing the updates, and needs to have permission to replace files.

I have read that other servers are setup that your own personal webserver process is actually considered a user of your files as well, so these extra steps and permissions are not necessary. This just isn’t true for OS X, so we need some extra configuration.

Hope this helps.