Why does WordPress keep telling me that it needs to access my web server?

Question

I applied several different fixes. wordpressuser

$ sudo adduser wordpressuser www-data
$ sudo chown www-data:www-data -R /var/www/html
$ chmod 7777 -R /var/www/html
$ reboot
root # adduser www-data www-data

None of these worked and the person ran out of steps because no matter what I did, WordPress wouldn't let me update or install stuff without it asking for FTP access.

I have my static web site in the HTML folder, the WordPress in a directory called blog, and a podcast generator in a folder called podcasts.

Everything inside the html folder, including the html folder itself, has full read write and execute permissions under the user www-data and group www-data.

Answer 1

You have to add a direct update method to your wp-config.php file.

Edit wp-config.php, and add the line define('FS_METHOD','direct'); somewhere between <?php and ?>, for instance like this:

define('FS_METHOD','direct');

// Get everything else
require_once(ABSPATH.'wp-settings.php');
?>

This, combined with the permissions you have set will allow Wordpress to Update directly, without going trough FTP.

I tested this just now, and it appears to work. The directory has to be writeable for the www-data-user that's running Wordpress.

Source: https://www.hongkiat.com/blog/update-wordpress-without-ftp/