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Unable to create directory wp-content/uploads/2013/08. Is its parent directory writable by the server?

Posted on August 11, 2013

Hello I have been trying to upload an image into my Wordpress dashboard without success. Every time I try to upload the image, I get an error like below:

Unable to create directory wp-content/uploads/2013/08. Is its parent directory writable by the server?

I am using CentOS 6.4 with latest Wordpress. My WP is located in /dir1/dir2/dir3/wordpress, and below this, wp-content has “uploads” directory and within this 2013/08 directories. Additionally, I had to create uploads/2013/08 as they did not exist in the original installation process following the instructions from DO. I have changed permission and that too did not work. Same upload error shows still.

This is what I do to see the error from Wordpress:

  1. Dashboard --> Pages --> ‘Add Media’
  2. Dashboard --> Media --> ‘Add New’

As mentioned, uploading an image shows the error stated above regardless of which image I choose. I have not had any problem installing themes or plugins, just the problem with image upload.

I have rebooted my host, also, and retired image upload without success.

My host has LAMP (CentOS) and WordPress.

Please could you suggest a fix for this kindly.

Thank you.



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Isn’t 777 a bit of a security risk?

Run the following command as root: <br> <br><pre>chmod -R 777 /dir1/dir2/dir3/wordpress/wp-content/uploads</pre> <br> <br>That should fix it.

Changing permissions of the uploads folder to 777 isn’t really ideal. <br> <br>For me it was just a ownership issue. On centso I did the following, to change ownership of the site to Apache. <br> <br>sudo chown -R apache:apache /var/www/html/site_name/

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