WordPress plugin install: Could not create directory

21 comments

1. You only need to change the access permissions for your WordPress Directory:

   chown -R www-data:www-data your-wordpress-directory
   

2. You can fix this by using the following commands. You should first be in the root folder of WordPress.

   sudo chown -R www-data:www-data wp-content/plugins/
   sudo chmod 775 wp-content
   
   sudo chown -R www-data:www-data wp-content/
   

3. The user that is running your web server does not have permissions to write to the directory that WordPress is intending to create the plugin directory in. You should chown the directory in question to the user that is running WordPress. It is most likely not root.

   In short, this is a permissions issue. Your touch command is working because you’re using it as root, and root has global permissions to write wherever it wants.

4. A quick solution would be to change the permissions of the following:

   • /var/www/html/wordpress/wp-content
   • /var/www/html/wordpress/wp-content/plugins

   Change it to 775.

   After installation, don’t forget to change it back to the default permissions.. 😀

5. I had to give ownership of /plugins and /upgrade to the server, nothing else.

   $ cd /var/www/wordpress/wp-content
   $ sudo chown www-data:www-data /plugings
   $ sudo chown www-data:www-data /upgrade
   

   Running Apache server on Ubuntu 18.04. Maybe more dirs will need to be changed later. Anyways, I plan to restore permissions once I finish editing, as suggested in this anwser.

6. If you have installed wordpress using apt, the config files are split in multiple directories. In that case you need to run:

   sudo chown -R -h www-data:www-data /var/lib/wordpress/wp-content/
   sudo chown -R -h www-data:www-data /usr/share/wordpress/wp-content/
   

   The -h switch changes the permissions for symlinks as well, otherwise they are not removable by user www-data

7. To solve permission issue on plugins and themes on localhost or production quickly, you just run this

   sudo chmod 757 wp-content/themes
   sudo chmod 757 wp-content/plugins
   

   if take care permission on production, you can run

   sudo chown -R www-data:www-data wp-content/themes
   sudo chown -R www-data:www-data wp-content/plugins
   

8. CentOS7 or Ubuntu 16

   ---

   1.

   WordPress uses ftp to install themes and plugins.
   So the ftpd should have been configured to create-directory

   vim /etc/pure-ftpd.confg
   

   and if it is no then should be yes

   # Are anonymous users allowed to create new directories?
   AnonymousCanCreateDirs       yes
   

   lastly

   sudo systemctl restart pure-ftpd
   

   2.

   Maybe there is an ownership issue with the parent directories.
   Find the Web Server user name and group name if it is Apache Web Server

   apachectl -S
   

   it will print

   ...
   ...
   User: name="apache" id=997
   Group: name="apache" id=1000
   

   on Ubuntu it is

   User: name=”www-data” id=33 not_used
   Group: name=”www-data” id=33 not_used

   then

   sudo chown -R apache:apache directory-name
   

   3.

   Sometimes it is because of directories permissions.
   So try

   sudo chmod -R 755 directory-name
   

   in some cases 755 does not work. (It should & I do not no why) so try

   sudo chmod -R 777 directory-name
   

   4.

   Maybe it is because of php safe mode.
   So turn it off in the root of your domain

   vim php.ini
   

   then add

   safe_mode = Off
   

   NOTE:
   For not entering FTP username and password each time installing a theme we can configure WordPress to use it directly by adding

   define('FS_METHOD','direct');
   

   to the wp-config.php file.

9. If you are mac user , using XAMP

   Go to the htdocs folder and open the terminal on the folder , as shown in the screenshot

   

   Then Type the following command on the Terminal

   **sudo chmod -R 777 <your wordpress folder Name>/**
   

   E.g sudo chmod -R 777 wordpress/

10. You need to change the permission of the directory

    1. At first change the user HTML folder (replace yourcomputerusername)

       sudo chown yourcomputerusername:yourcomputerusername /var/www/html

    2. Next change the permission for the user

       cd /var/www/html

       sudo chmod -R goa=rwx wordpress

       or

       sudo chmod -R 777 wordpress/wp-content

11. If anyone using shared hosting and get same problem it may be disk space issue. In that case contact with your hosting support and ask them to increase disk space of your acocunt.

12. I was on XAMPP for linux localhost and this worked for me:

    sudo chown -R my-linux-username wp-content

13. What I end up doing is every time I create a WordPress project. in /www/html

    I run below command

    sudo chown www-data:www-data  wordpress_folder_name -R
    

    hope this will help someone.

14. For me the problem was FTP server that WP is using to upload update. It had writting disabled in configuration, so just enabling it fixed the problem.

    Shame on WordPress for providing such misleading error message.

15. You could try

    sudo chmod goa=rwx -R /var/www/html
    

16. None of the above work for me except this one.

    sudo chown daemon:daemon /opt/bitnami/apache/htdocs/

    Don’t forget to change /opt/bitnami/apache/htdocs/ to your directory

17. Webserver user must have write access to directories to perform such operations, so you can try to change owner of files to webserver user (apache in this example, but can be differ from yours)

    chown -R apache YOUR_BLOG_DIRECTORY
    

18. If you are using some app that wraps http, you have to set these user in the command.

    sudo chown -R [desireduser]:[desireduser] wp-content/
    

    By example, if you are using lampp, the users that init httpd is “daemon” and the command that works will be:

    sudo chown -R [desireduser]:[desireduser] wp-content/
    

    You can search in your httpd.conf file
    

19. To solve permission issue on ubuntu server, you just run this

    sudo chmod 777 -R 'wordpress wp-content file location' 
    

    for example.

    sudo chmod 777 -R /usr/share/wordpress/wp-content
    

20. wordpressProject is the project name.

    /var/www/html/wordpressProject sudo chmod -R 777 wp-content
    

    Thanks. It will work.

21. Absolutely it must be work!

    • Use this
      chown -Rf www-data:www-data /var/www/html

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