Enabling SFTP update option for WordPress

By default WordPress allows updates of itself, plugins and themes by FTP or FTPS connection. FTP is old and not very secure and should be avoided so it would be better to use much more secure connection type like SFTP (FTP over SSH). To make it available we need to install some packages on our server.

If you are using Ubuntu Karmic or newer all you need to do is:

aptitude install libssh2-php

and then just restart your Apache server.

If you have older Ubuntu or some other distribution without libssh2-php package you can try this solution:

aptitude install php5-dev php5-cli php-pear build-essential libssh2-1
pecl install -f ssh2

If everything is OK create file /etc/php5/conf.d/ssh2.ini with contents:

extension=ssh2.so

and restart Apache.

Now you should be able to update your WordPress installation from admin page using SFTP connection.

Read more here and in comment #250.