[wp-hackers] How to install a new theme?

[Steve Litt]

Hi all,

I'm running WordPress on Ubuntu 13.10, installed via Ubuntu's normal
package. From http://127.0.0.1/blog/wp-admin/themes.php , I go to the
Install Themes tab, search for ryu, click "Install Now", and I get "To
perform the requested action, WordPress needs to access your web
server. Please enter your FTP credentials"

I'd rather not give someone FTP or sftp access, and besides, I'm behind
a firewall, but no problem: I just downloaded ryu myself, unzipped it
into /usr/share/wordpress/wp-content/themes/ryu in exactly the same way
as the
preexisting /usr/share/wordpress/wp-content/themes/twentythirteen, but
when I went to WordPress, ryu wasn't shown as an installed theme. No
problem, I logged out and back into Wordpress, same problem. I stopped
and started Apache: Same problem. I rebooted the computer. Same problem.

Twentytwelve is installed too. I think I installed it yesterday without
these problems, but I'm not sure. Anyway, I grepped the
entire /usr/share/wordpress tree for "twentytwelve" and, other than the
files inside the theme itself, I came up with the following files:

* wp-admin/includes/update-core.php
* wp-content/languages/*.mo
* wp-includes/class-wp-theme.php

At that point I decided to quit experimenting and ask for help. Ideally
I'd like to be able to install a new theme *both* the automatic way
from my WordPress site (but without giving WP an (s)ftp login), and by
downloading the theme .zip and incorporating it into my installation.

I read on the Internet various descriptions of the "ftp credentials"
problem as being a permissions problem or something you fix with chown,
but all these posts conflicted with each other in the details so I
decided to ask here. For all I know it's just because my Ubuntu machine
is behind a firewall.

Thanks,

Steve

Steve Litt                *  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance