alex in a nutshell

December 28, 2014

Update WordPress via SSH

Filed under: — Alex Salamakha @ 2:53 PM

I’m trying to keep my web server as secure as possible and I disable FTP on the server.
Ever since that moment I’ve been having troubles with automatic updates of WordPress but never got around to fixing it. Now I have.
WordPress offers two options out of the box: FTP or FTPS (SSL)

Since I didn’t configure FTP, I naturally selected FTPS (SSL), since I use SFTP to upload files to the server. WRONG!
SFTP is NOT the same as FTPS. Here is a long article explaining details.

Both FTPS and SFTP use a combination of asymmetric algorithm (RSA, DSA), symmetric algorithm (DES/3DES, AES, Twhofish etc.) and a key-exchange algorithm. For authentication FTPS (or, to be more precise, SSL/TLS protocol under FTP) uses X.509 certificates, while SFTP (SSH protocol) uses SSH keys.

Anyway, how do you solve this particular WordPress auto-update problem?
By installing a plug-in, of course!
SSH SFTP Updater Support is the easiest way to keep your WordPress installation up-to-date with SFTP.
It gives you one more option on your update screen:

Voila!

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