Question

I am trying to upload a file in wordpress using the Media > Add New — Option but when I click upload I get the following error:

Unable to create directory wp-content/uploads/2012/11. Is its parent
directory writable by the server?

I have WordPress 4.3.1 installed.

Thank you

EDIT:
I am on a shared server with: host=i686-redhat-linux-gnu and Apache. I changed the permissions to 755 and 777 of wp-content/uploads but I get the following error:

“my_file.jpg” has failed to upload due to an error Unable to create
directory wp-content/uploads/2012/11. Is its parent directory writable
by the server?

Any ideas?

Answer 1

You need to set folder permissions for /uploads/ and possibly for /wp-content/ , too.

Typically, both folders should be 755. You may have to temporarily raise /uploads/ to 777 and upload an image (this will also force the server to change the folder permissions and user to the correct settings), but change it back to 755 right away.

It’s easiest to set permissions with an FTP client. See Filezilla and FTP Clients « WordPress Codex.

And see Changing File Permissions « WordPress Codex for the correct WordPress permission settings:

From the codex.wordpress: Typically, all files should be owned by your user (ftp) account on your web server, and should be writable by that account. On shared
hosts, files should never be owned by the webserver process itself
(sometimes this is www, or apache, or nobody user).

Any file that needs write access from WordPress should be owned or
group-owned by the user account used by the WordPress (which may be
different than the server account). For example, you may have a user
account that lets you FTP files back and forth to your server, but
your server itself may run using a separate user, in a separate
user group, such as dhapache or nobody. If WordPress is running as the
FTP account, that account needs to have write access, i.e., be the
owner of the files, or belong to a group that has write access. In the
latter case, that would mean permissions are set more permissively
than default (for example, 775 rather than 755 for folders, and 664
instead of 644).