You will need to add the user in question to the apache group. sudo adduser username www-data Then you will need to modify the user permissions sudo usermod -a -G www-data username www-data is a typical group for apache. You may need to use a different group depending on your requirements. This question has a good answer about the the usermod flags: unix.stackexchange.com/questions/608822/ I am not affiliated with wp cli or WordPress. I came to this solution through searching, asking, tiral and error.