One of the most eagerly awaited features in WordPress 2.7 is its automatic update function. Where WordPress upgrades have historically been, to say the least, a pain, version 2.7 and beyond promise to erase the memory of that pain with just one click.
This is fantastic – when it works. Today WordPress 2.7.1 was released and immediately I decided to put the new automatic update feature to the test. Alas, it didn’t work as advertised. After clicking on “Upgrade Automatically,” I encountered a puzzling Connection Information screen that seemed to want FTP credentials. No further documentation on what those credentials should be could be found. After digging around, I discovered the problem was a permission issue: all the WordPress files and directories need to be owned by the same user id as that of the web server process; in my case, this was Apache. Executing the following Linux command in my WordPress directory cleared up the problem.
chown -R apache.apache *
After running that command, the automatic update feature worked exactly as advertised. So, if you’re running WordPress 2.7 and are having problems with automatic updates, checking and correcting the ownership of your WordPress files might clear up the problem. Bear in mind that you need to be root in order to run the command shown above. If you’re running on a shared web hosting account, chances are that you’ll have to perform the upgrade manually. As always, don’t forget to backup your files and your database before performing the upgrade.
