Set Wordpress file permissions an FS method on localhost

wp-file-permissions.md

Set Wordpress file permissions and FS method on localhost

On Mac OS X (Leopard), the Apache HTTP Server runs under the user account, _www which belongs to the group _www. To allow WordPress to configure wp-config.php during installation, update files during upgrades, and update the .htaccess file for pretty permalinks, give the server write permission on the files.

One way to do this is to change the owner of the wordpress directory and its contents to _www. Keep the group as staff, a group to which your user account belongs and give write permissions to the group.

Step 1

$ cd /<wherever>/Sites/<thesite>
$ sudo chown -R _www wordpress
$ sudo chmod -R g+w wordpress

This way, the WordPress directories have a permission level of 775 and files have a permission level of 664. No file nor directory is world-writeable.

Step 2

Add this to your wp-config.php

define('FS_METHOD', 'direct');

Great thanks for this, just for those running on linux/ubuntu, note the user wont be _www
Also, you can run these commands from the root of your project:

sudo chown -R www-data .
sudo chmod -R g+w .

Great thank you as well! For those running Mac 0S 10.8 (Mountain Lion):
Step 1
sudo cd /wherever/Sites/wordpress
sudo chmod -R _www /wherever/Sites/wordpress
sudo chmod -R _www /wherever/Sites/wordpress

for me localhost is /Library/WebServer/Documents/Sites/wordpress which is typical for Apache running in OS 10.8

then the same Step 2 as above
and add this to the end of your wp-config.php
define('FS_METHOD', 'direct');

Thanks! That was helpful! 🙏

Hi all,

Can I just leave
define('FS_METHOD', 'direct');
this piece of code in my wp-config.php forever ?
will it attract any security issues?

is there anyway i can bypass this step ?

@rajeevbohan I don't see any security issues to do it on localhost, but would do it in production.

If you have access to the wp cli command, you can use this command to avoid manually editing the wp-config.php file.

wp config set --add FS_METHOD direct

Thanks lajlev and JollyWizard