LIGHTSAIL WORDPRESS 6.3.1 MULTISITE MISSING PLUGINS ADD NEW OPTION AND THEMES

Question

Hi All .. I just created a fresh, out-of-the-box LightSail WordPress 6.3.1 Multi-site instance.  I assigned it a static IP and am able to bring up the WordPress dashboard successfully.
However, I see a number of critical elements missing from the WordPress dashboard, most notably the 'Plugins > Add New' option and also the 'Themes' option.
I verified that the user ID that was created by Bitnami named 'user' is an administrator.  I can ssh connect to the instance and su as well.  I did a find to look for the wp-content and wordpress subdirectories but found neither.
I am in the free trial period of a LighSail starter account ($3.50/month); I am hoping that does not matter.
The task I am trying to accomplish is to import a WordPress site that was hosted elsewhere into WordPress on LightSail.  I have a gzip file created by Softaculous on the other hosting platform.  To do the import I need several WordPress plugins.
Could anyone please help and shed some light on this? Please let me know if I am missing something.
I tried some AI chats (ChatGPT, Claude2, Poe) but have found no solution.
I am considering deleting and re-creating the instance.
Thanks in advance for any and all assistance .. much appreciated.
-Fred

Answer

Thanks for the reply. As I described, when I installed the LightSail WordPress 6.3.1 multi-site out-of-the-box using the Bitnami installer. It came up but the WordPress dashboard is missing the key elements [Plugins > Add New and Themes] and does not look like yours, which is what it should look like.
The user account that the installer created named 'user' is an administrator so it is not clear why the options are missing,
The only option I took before installing was to assign a static IP, and that is working: I can SSH connect to the static IP successfully.
Did you do anything special?  
I have resorted to trying to install and configure WordPress and MySQL manually, which is tedious.
I am going to try creating another new LightSail instance from scratch and see if the same thing happens again.
Any help is greatly appreciated!

Answer

Hello.

I have tried running Lightsail in my environment and it appears to be able to add plugins.  
Are you and I checking differently?  
![t](/media/postImages/original/IMR1nMTPKMR62HjfVasgoRrA)  
![a](/media/postImages/original/IMYKTYDSqxTH-wg6LUhk9isA)

Answer

Hello,

I'm sorry to hear about your issues.  Did you create the WordPress multi-site from our blueprint, or you attempting to modify a standard WordPress installation into a multi-site one?  I just tested creating a new one from our WordPress multi-site blueprint and I see the expected "plugins" and "appearance" controls in the left hand column of navigation elements.

To your other question.  When I ssh into my instance I see the content you are looking for under 
~/stack/wordpress
and
~/stack/wordpress/wp-content

LIGHTSAIL WORDPRESS 6.3.1 MULTISITE MISSING PLUGINS > ADD NEW OPTION AND THEMES

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