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<p dir="auto">On 2 Aug 2020, at 13:13, Murray Eisenberg wrote:</p>
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<div class="plaintext"><blockquote><p dir="auto">(1) OK, I already have a plugins subdirectory the wordpress wp-content directory. It’s already populated with an index.php, hello.php, and an aksimet subdirectory.<br>
<br>
I put the new plugin I needed, wp-all-import there, too.<br>
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Unfortunately, when I open the site and use the Tools > Import tool, that plugin is not shown, just the several that need to be installed (via ftp).<br>
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How do I tell wordpress that it’s there and can be used?</p>
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<p dir="auto">I don't know of a way to that, as I was unaware of the apparent fact that it takes more than just having the files there. I am sorry tohave led you astray...</p>
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<div class="plaintext"><blockquote><p dir="auto">(2) How do I tell whether apache2 is running as _www?</p>
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<p dir="auto">Two options:</p>
<p dir="auto">A: If you're running a modern MacOS (10.8 Mountain Lion or newer) you can run this in a Terminal session:</p>
<pre><code> ps uw -p $( pgrep httpd )
</code></pre>
<p dir="auto">That will give you a list of all of the httpd processes with multiple columns, the first of which is the user each is running as.</p>
<p dir="auto">B: On any version of MacOS, you can run /Applications/Utilities/Activity Monitor.app and search for "httpd." That will also give you a list of all of the httpd processes with multiple columns, the first of which is the user each one is running as.</p>
<p dir="auto">Either way you get the process list, there should be one instance of httpd running as "root" (the parent Apache process) and a handful of others all running as another user, probably "_<a href="http://www.">www.</a>" Those child processes are where WordPress runs and they need to be able to write to much of the WordPress directory tree, because WordPress both manages content that lives in the filesystem and administers itself with WP core, plugin, and theme updates & installation. See <a href="https://wordpress.org/support/article/changing-file-permissions/#permission-scheme-for-wordpress">https://wordpress.org/support/article/changing-file-permissions/#permission-scheme-for-wordpress</a> for details.</p>
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<div class="plaintext"><blockquote><p dir="auto">(3) Note that my wordpress site is installed as a “blog” subdirectory of ~/Sites, and I have a virtual host set up so that’s OK for the location. (I NEVER want any actual content for anything to be in /opt; I want it all under my home user directory.</p>
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<p dir="auto">This doesn't change the need for much of that directory tree to be writable by the user ID used to run the web server. As outlined at the link above, there are multiple ways to do that but they all amount to the web server user being able to modify essentially all of WordPress.</p>
<p dir="auto">-- <br>
Bill Cole<br>
<a href="mailto:bill@scconsult.com">bill@scconsult.com</a> or <a href="mailto:billcole@apache.org">billcole@apache.org</a><br>
(AKA @grumpybozo and many *@billmail.scconsult.com addresses)<br>
Not For Hire (currently)</p>
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