Short tip: Add SSH authentication to Wordpress

Wordpress updates, themes and plugins can be installed very comfortable in the backend - unfortunately it is still required to specify FTP or FTPS connection information. Depending on your personal preferences or security policy FTP is often not an option - e.g. when you're maintaining a central directory for SSH users as primary identificatino source.

Fourtunately, SSH and SFTP support can be added to Wordpress by installing the SSH SFTP Updater Support plugin.

The addon uses phpseclib and supports username/password combinations as well as key authentication:

Alternatively, Wordpress can be configured in a way to install the particular files automatically if the web server's user has adequate file system permissions. To implement this, append the following lines to the wp-config.php file:

1/* use direct file system access */
2define('FS_METHOD', 'direct');