CoPress

A couple of versions back, WordPress introduced the ability to install and upgrade plugins through the admin. This means that, if your site has the appropriate permissions, you can install plugins without a FTP client. Unfortunately, ever since I can remember, this doesn't work as intended on our Liquid Web servers. In some cases the plugin upgrades after a long timeout process but in most cases it stalls indefinitely. With WebFaction, however, the process works seamlessly 99% of the time. My goal is to figure out the difference between the two server environments and hopefully remedy the issue.

On the WordPress forums, I came across a thread describing a similar, if not the same, issue. We have the same issue where the plugin browser works but the installer does not. On the recommendation of the discussion, I downloaded and installed a plugin called Core Control with the intent of comparing the two server environments (the Inside CoPress blog on Liquid Web and my personal blog on WebFaction). On WebFaction, I have a "Direct" transport protocol:

whereas on Liquid Web we do not:

I still haven't figured this issue out, but feel like I'm getting somewhere. Also, on both instances, "PHP HTTP Extension" is not installed. My next plan of attack is to figure out what the "Direct" transport is referring to and what it might take to install it.

Short update on this. I'm exchanging emails (and screencasts) with Liquid Web right now, and it seems like the big stall during execution is actually the default behavior on normal WordPress installs on shared accounts. Our ideal server environment would offer an experience like WebFaction offers, so I'm going to do my best to compare the two environments, see what's different, and make improvements.