WordPress Asking For FTP Credentials

In this short post, I am going to share with you how to fix problem on WordPress asking for FTP credentials. This is a problem I encountered recently when I try to update one of my company WordPress websites to the latest version. The WordPress requesting me to enter the FTP’s login ID and password. I was so shocked when seeing the message. For your info, I logged in as an Admin user. So, I should have the full access to update the WordPress. This is the first time I see this error message.

As usual, I quickly search for solution on Google and I found the answer. It is due the folder permission doesn’t allow me to do any update on the ‘wp-content’ folder. You can fix this problem easily by changing the folder permission to allow read and write access.

I am going to show you how to change the folder permission here. In my case, my WordPress is hosting on a Linux server, thus this guide is relevant to Linux environment only.

How to fix problem on WordPress asking for FTP credentials

First, you need to login to the hosting server. I assume you have access to the WordPress hosting server.

Using the following command to change your current directory to your WordPress root document directory.

In my case, my root document directory is /var/www/mywebsite/

 cd /var/www/mywebsite

Next, you will be changing the ownership of the all the folders, sub-folders and files to the user and group that running the webserver service. In this case, the user and group that running the webserver service is apache. You can change the ownership with the following command.

 chown -R apache:apache *

Lastly, you will be changing the permission of all the folders, sub-folders and files to have read and write access. You can change the permission with the following command.

 chmod -R g+w *

To Your Success,

Kwah Choon Hiong