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Aero and WP Postman are WP Stratos’s own plugins, and neither one is listed on WordPress.org. That means Plugins → Add New can’t find them by search, the way it would for a typical plugin. WP Stratos Environment closes that gap with a small installer built directly into the welcome banner: point, click, done. No zip files to download by hand, no FTP.

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Where you’ll see it

  • In the Performance section of the welcome banner, whenever Aero isn’t installed, or is installed but not yet active.
  • In the Mail Delivery card, whenever WP Postman isn’t installed or not yet active.

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What happens when you click Download

1

Resolve the release

The plugin checks the package’s GitHub repository for its latest tagged release and shows you the version number and exact file size before anything downloads, so you know what you’re about to pull down.
2

Download

The archive streams into a private staging folder inside your uploads directory, one that’s blocked from direct web access. A live progress bar tracks bytes as they land, so a slow connection looks like a slow bar rather than a frozen page.
3

Verify

Once the download finishes, the plugin confirms the response was a genuine success, then checks that the file actually starts with a zip signature. That second check catches the case where a rate limit or a login wall quietly hands back an HTML page instead of a plugin archive. Only a file that passes both checks gets treated as installable.
4

Install

The archive is unpacked using WordPress’s own plugin installer, the exact code path Plugins → Add New uses for anything else. Anything on your site that hooks into a plugin install, logging, a security scanner, whatever, sees a completely normal one.
5

Activate

The plugin is activated automatically.

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Picking up where you left off

Reload the page mid-download, or mid-install, and the button remembers what’s already on disk. It offers to continue from there instead of starting the download over. A completed download stays staged for an hour and clears itself automatically after that, so there’s no pile of half-finished archives building up in your uploads folder.

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When a direct install isn’t available

Some sites don’t allow WordPress to write plugin files on its own, for instance when DISALLOW_FILE_MODS is set, or when the account you’re logged in with doesn’t have install permissions. When that’s the case, the Download button becomes a plain link straight to the release on GitHub instead, so you or whoever manages file access on the server can grab the archive and install it the usual way, through Plugins → Add New → Upload Plugin.
Last modified on August 24, 2026