WordPress 2.7 offers the ability to automatically upgrade plugins as they are released. No more downloading and FTP’ing.

My first experience upgrading a plugin was one of those head scratching moments. I clicked the “upgrade automatically” link and was presented a form asking for connection information.

What sort of connection information? To the plugin developer’s web site or WordPress.org? What user account? There is no documentation at WordPress.org for this feature and the forum posts were of little help.

The obvious solution was the last I tried; you must enter the information for your hosting platform where WordPress lives.

Hostname

myblog.com

Username

myblogadmin (try your hosting admin user account which should be the same as your FTP account for up/downloading of files to your web site)

Password

Password for the preceding user account

Connection Type

Normal (unsecured) FTP or Secure FTP

Behind the scenes WordPress will create a temporary folder inside of wp-content called upgrade.

If you are having trouble with downloading, unpacking, or installing the plugin you’ll need to look at file ownership and/or permissions on your web host. Chris Abernethy provides some helpful insight.

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