Does WordPress still ask for FTP credentials for each file operation?

Question

There is a reply from 2014, that is a great answer to a question I have, but WordPress changes, and I'm wondering if this is still true, "WP Filesystem API will ask for FTP credentials, but it will do so for each operation. They aren't stored persistently."

Where does wordpress store the FTP credentials?

If this is still true, I'm guessing that the interaction between WordPress and the host would be that the host would send the default (main) FTP credentials unless a specific account were added to wp-config.

Answer 1

Not quite right. WordPress only requests FTP credentials if it cannot modify files. That's the important bit from Rarst's reply. This all comes down to who owns the files and does php (and WordPress) have access via either the group and/or user to modify these files?

The default is to use php's filesystem extension which does not require FTP at all. In the case of using FTP, credentials would always need to be set either within the WordPress admin for each request or in wp-config.php.

Here's a good overview of what's going on: What security concerns should I have when setting FS_METHOD to "direct" in wp-config?

The codex for FS_METHOD lists the different options for WordPress interacting with the file system.

To answer your question, nothing has changed with regards to the way WordPress interacts with the filesystem with regards to FTP.

Hope that helps!