Problems updating WordPress

Had been playing around which Apache to add a new virtual host and somewhere, somehow, the auto update on WordPress stopped working and insisted that I entered the FTP credentials which is not something I have enabled on this server.   A bit of googling came across this post highlighted a potential work around in the WP-config.php to allow direct updates.    A quick edit with EE and an apachectl restart and WordPress update routine worked flawlessly as it did before, with out needing FTP access.

https://www.hongkiat.com/blog/update-wordpress-without-ftp/

Downtime – Packages vs Ports

Website has been down a few days as been very busy, so tried to rely on package updates rather than building from ports to keep everything patched as Perl and Python going thru the ‘Flavour’ splitting and packages where supposed to be easier.    To cut a long story short, it also downgraded my PHP version and dropped the Database support module in the process.  So in order to get the website back up I have had to manually install the port for the DB support, mixing packages and ports which is not a good idea.   At least the site is up and running again and I shall stick to ports in the future to ensure the latest patches are always applied.