madridman

I’m new to WordPress and host the installed software on my own server – seemingly successfully. But like everyone else, nor I can access my server via FTP to change Themes or update to the latest version of WordPress (running 2.8.5). I CAN, however, post blog entries without problem using the dashboard and CAN access the server using my everyday FTP client. But when I use the same FTP Hostname/Username/PW information to make changes using my WP dashboard I too get the error “Cannot connect to server. Please check FTP information and try again.”

So I just sent an email to my hosting service (Pair.com) and here’s their reply (although it didn’t help me):

PHP5 is the default PHP for all pair accounts (so if you have a page with a .php extension, it would use PHP5 unless you have some custom configuration to override the default).

If WordPress is trying to perform FTP functions, the problem could be that our PHP is not configured with FTP support. This could potentially require you to compile a custom PHP binary for your account (which is unfortunately not something for which we provide direct support). You may need to consult the WordPress developers about the problem.

Any solution to this problem? Is it a bug afterall? And how do we upgrade to a new version with the bug-fix if we can’t connect to the server to do so? Or is a total re-install the answer? (insert rolling-eyes graemlin here)