Been using WordPress now for about 4 months on my projects and I occasionally find problems with plugins and themes but not on WordPress itself. I seem to be getting good at troubleshooting some.
Yesterday my host changed servers, then I upgraded to the latest version of WordPress and everything got whack on uploading images in the admin with this error.
Unable to create directory /home/username/public_html/wp-content/uploads/2008/05. Is its parent directory writable by the server?
Here are troubleshooting steps you can do.
1. With the error above, it can be assumed it is a permission problem with the folder. Default is 755, With your FTP software or WebFTP, edit the uploads folder in the wp-content to 777. Then try again.
2. If that doesn’t work, it can be an ownership issue. Wherein the owner of the files is apache and not your user account.
If you have access to SSH, you can edit the file to change ownership to
chown -R username:apache_user /home/username/public_html/wp-content/
username:apache_user for me is the ftp account, others are different.
3. If this doesn’t work. Check the upload path in the admin – Settings – Miscellaneous and make sure it is wp-content/uploads sometimes the upgrade or server move changes it to the absolute path.
The 3rd solution worked for me. Hope you find this useful
November 16th, 2008 at 11:20 am
Good for wordpress resource.
December 18th, 2008 at 2:07 am
Wow thank you!
Finally someone who explained the problem in a easy to understand way.
I owe you a favour – shoot me an email if you need any socail media help.
Thanks again
Danny
January 4th, 2009 at 7:45 am
You’re welcome Danny. Glad to have helped.
January 24th, 2009 at 1:32 pm
Nice site and information……Few days ago one of my WP article directory site was not working well with its additional plugins……Do you have any idea…….why did this happen?
Now all are normal……but few of my submitters took u turn………I found this site informative….so looking for someone…..who will response this problem.
Happy Chinese New Year though.
February 27th, 2009 at 7:00 am
Thank very much, the third solution worked for me too
March 7th, 2009 at 6:09 am
check if your web server has php safe mode disabled. if it is turned on, the upload will fail even if the file permissions are set correctly.
March 10th, 2009 at 1:09 am
In my one website i have same problem: “Unable to create directory /home/username/public_html/wp-content/uploads/2009/01. Is its parent directory writable by the server?”
These type of error you can solve by below steps as per my experience
- First pass 777 permission to WP-content & also too upload folder and its sub folder
- Then moves to your admin section where you can find setting option, in this section check “Miscellaneous’ for uploading path ( This is the main problem please check it again)
- After this please create folder which are mention in your error. as per above mention error i have to create “2009? and also a subfolder with name “01?
- Now try to upload image…
Best Luck!!
March 19th, 2009 at 7:15 am
finally… i was able to upload pics… thanks man!!!
March 28th, 2009 at 5:38 am
Too Easy, Option 3 works for me too. Thanks for putting this up!
Anthony
May 11th, 2009 at 8:14 am
Many thanks, it works now!
May 11th, 2009 at 2:15 pm
Wow, you are amazing. I totally forgot about there being a setting for the upload path. I was having way to much trouble… sometimes things are simpler than they seem.
Thanks so much =]
June 29th, 2009 at 8:02 am
Thank you that helped me solve my trouble. My case was the third reason
June 29th, 2009 at 10:22 pm
If you’re on a Plesk server with RHEL, the following should work (and preserve security):
mkdir wp-content/uploads
chown -R apache:apache wp-content/uploads
chmod -R 744 wp-content/uploads
July 1st, 2009 at 1:44 pm
In my one website i have same problem: “Unable to create directory /home/username/public_html\wp-content\uploads\20097. Is its parent directory writable by the server?”
July 6th, 2009 at 4:34 am
thanks for the third one it works for me…………..
July 10th, 2009 at 12:59 pm
Very nice guide! Worked out well for me, keep it up
November 15th, 2009 at 11:27 pm
I am facing the same problem on my couple of production domains. Lets see which of these solutions works for me.
June 9th, 2010 at 12:39 pm
I had this problem and spent several hours reading posts about with no luck. My permissions were right and the upload folder path was correct.
I realised that it was a SELinux issue for me. If you run SELinux then you will need to run the command below to allow apache (httpd) to execute particular PHP commands, including creating new files and folders. Here is the command:
chcon -R -t httpd_sys_content_t
Hope that helps someone else. This was driving me crazy and I was about ready to give up and uninstall WordPress. Glad it didn’t come to that.
June 28th, 2010 at 6:26 pm
Just a heads up that 777 permissions allow all kinds of security risks. Most webhosts will never recommend changing anything to these permissions as it allows you and the rest of the world full access to your folders. From there things like malicious scripts among other things can be uploaded.
July 5th, 2010 at 11:38 pm
I had the same problem too, my hosting provider moved my site to a new server and I was unable to upload images any more. The 3rd solution worked for me. If you ever have the same problem, make sure the upload directory is exactly wp-content/uploads.
July 7th, 2010 at 10:03 am
Option 3 worked great for me, thanks!!
July 17th, 2010 at 3:32 am
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August 20th, 2010 at 7:32 am
thanks pal
i faced Same problem today
this post was life saver
And I solved it by settings uploads (third option)
regards
October 13th, 2010 at 4:24 am
Miscellaneous Settings isn’t there in WP-ADMIN…how i add this in settings
November 22nd, 2010 at 10:48 pm
The 3rd solution worked for me. Hope you find this useful
February 16th, 2011 at 8:36 pm
Thanks man… The 3rd solution worked for me… life saver
October 10th, 2011 at 10:51 pm
THANK YOU!! I really appreciate that you took the time to write this post. It’s kept me from tearing my hair out
Thanks again!
December 17th, 2011 at 1:53 am
Its not working for me
i still getting the error