By default, if you want to install plugins or upgrade WordPress, you have to provide the FTP details. If you are running WordPress on localhost, you won’t have the FTP credentials. In this case you won’t be able to install plugins or upgrade WordPress. There is a way to configure WP to don’t use FTP, instead install directly using the Read/Write permission of folder.

If WordPress can’t install anything without FTP, it needs another method – direct install. WP will download the required files in a ZIP archive format, extract it to the plugins directory. But WP can’t just move/copy files to a directory of your WP root with out permissions. So you have to change the permissions of your WP root.

In the recent post, I mentioned about OpenShift, a PaaS Service that offers Free Hosting. You can update your application using GIT. OpenShift also provides SSHing into your application. You may have heard of FTP protocol which allows you to transfer files through web. Most hosting companies use FTP protocol to update client apps. OpenShift unlike AppFog have FTP support, but in a different manner.

It has SFTP support ie SSH File Transfer Protocol. SFTP is a FTP like protocol that allows to transfer files via SSH sessions. Most FTP clients support SFTP. FTP client FileZilla supports SFTP which means that you can use FileZilla for updating site hosted on OpenShift. You can download FileZilla from here available for Linux, Mac & Windows.