why i can't install a new plugin on my wordpress?

December 30, 2014 74.9k views
elearn
By:
elearn

I can connect my vps ip with putty ,hostname is a.b.c.d , ftp user is root ,password is password .
None of connection type (ftp or ftps) can add a new plugin .

Failed to connect to FTP Server

Connection Information

To perform the requested action, WordPress needs to access your web server. Please enter your FTP credentials to proceed. If you do not remember your credentials, you should contact your web host.

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18 Answers
ryanpq MOD December 30, 2014

Wordpress will prompt you for FTP credentials if it does not have permission to write the files it needs to. If you log in via putty and run the following command (assuming this is an Ubuntu droplet) it will set the files to be owned by the user that the web service is run as and should resolve the problem.

chown -Rf www-data.www-data /var/www/html/
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  • themikesalter March 20, 2015

    OH MY GOD I have spent half a day looking for this solution. THANK YOU.

  • matiasmenker September 29, 2015

    Thanks for the solution!

  • dmsuja January 12, 2016

    Dude, seriously, thank you!!!

  • aaronmann613348 January 13, 2016

    I just want to add that sometimes sudo is required before the above command depending on the user you login in with

    • ryanpq MOD January 13, 2016

      Absolutely. This assumes that you have not already created a non-root user and are using the default.

  • emj March 1, 2016

    WORKED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    2016 #Stillsavingpeople'ssanity
  • erangafatic March 1, 2016

    Thank you ryanpq .. it really solved the problem

  • TOKA June 3, 2016

    Woops it worked ! Thank you, it was really trouble for me

  • chinmayrajyaguru June 15, 2016

    It's work perfectly.
    Thank you!

  • tnbland September 2, 2016

    Wow ! It's worked. thank you so much !!

  • ic September 8, 2016

    Thanks. It works for wordpress.

  • robinzhang September 20, 2016

    it works, many thanks~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

  • waituk7 September 6, 2017

    That worked and Thank you.

  • elhsilv February 21, 2018

    Mantap, tengkyu geng, for the solution!

  • schoudhary February 27, 2018

    Thanks for the help, Get resolved

  • thanhbinds July 7, 2018

    Good work., thank you

  • mohaimin August 28, 2018

    NEED HELP!
    I ran this command and it did let me install the plugins normally but now gulp is getting permission error while executing!
    'EPERM: operation not permitted, chmod '/var/www/html/wordpress'
    Need a solve for this, thanks!

    • ryanpq MOD August 28, 2018

      Hi. The error you're seeing is related to permissions rather than ownership so you're half-way there with ownership now set correctly.

      This page in the WordPress Codex covers the correct default permissions to use on the files and directories in your WordPress installation. You can change them by using chmod commands.

      chmod XXX myfile

      Change one file or directory's permissions with a new numeric indicator.

      chmod -Rf XXX mydirectory/*

      Recursively change the permissions of everything in a directory where XXX is the numeric permission level.

      • mohaimin August 29, 2018

        Thank you for the reply! Can you be a little bit more specific on the command? I want to be able to install plugins and run nodejs packages inside the wordpress folder. So, should it be chmod -Rf 0666 /var/www/html/wordpress/* ? I'm new at using linux so don't wanna mess up my file permissions of the file structure. Thanks in advance!

  • bhupendrachakradhar October 22, 2018

    Just want to add a small change as below command worked for me
    sudo chown -Rf www-data.www-data /var/www/html/

elearn December 31, 2014

The command solved my problem.
What does www-data.www-data mean?
www-data is the group name ,how about the second www-data ?

root@rebuild:~# cat /etc/group
www-data:x:33:

Reply
  • ryanpq MOD March 20, 2015

    This is the user and group. In this case they share the same name. The syntax works like:

    chown -Rf user.group /path/to/files

    Where -Rf tells chown to implement this change (R) recursively and to (f) force the change rather than prompt for each file.

    The user.group can also be indicated with a colon separating them as user:group (some systems may not accept the . instead of the : )

daynelarsen March 13, 2017

On Centos running Apache to serve you can do like above but for the apache user

sudo chown -R apache:apache /var/www/html

hope this helps someone

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kembartehnika January 12, 2015

thanks, this is work :)

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garyharris1 June 11, 2015

Hey friend,
You can check out https://wordpress.org/support/topic/cant-update-plugins-or-wordpress-or-install-new-plugins for the solution.

At current date, there is no lack of WordPress plugins but the main problems arise during their installation. Especially while doing it via FTP method. Well it’s not like unsolvable issue; you can just follow the link I have suggested in order to tackle it down.

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erangafatic March 1, 2016
[deleted]
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2rn June 28, 2016

OMG.
Thanks man, u wouldnt be able to guess the time i spent dealing with this, not to mention ruining my website in the process.
thanks thanks thanks X10000000000
thanks

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rodriguesmarcos July 13, 2016

It's awsome! I was trying to do this for two days! hahaha

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krishnag October 6, 2016

Awesome!! Thank you for sharing the wonderful comment. I was able to resolve that issue as well.
Namaskara,
Krishna

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tavestcom October 9, 2016

Use sudo. It works for me. (Windows)
sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html/

Reply
phamhongphichan October 27, 2016

If you use the Centos system and use the NGINX as webserver, please type in terminal is:

sudo chown -R nginx:nginx /var/www/

This command will allow nginx execute read/write to folder /var/www/

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narendeveloper1 February 20, 2017

Thanks!!!!!

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Abdo March 21, 2017

not working

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aleksandar982 September 12, 2017

I don't quite understand... Where should I type it?
I get the FTP Username but don't know the Password. Can I change it somehow?

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toovicious April 2, 2018

Hey forum... This seems to be the thread with the right answers so if there's help out there, HELP!

I've been trying to upload an image but I'm encountering the following error:

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

I've tried the solution listed above but my story isn't a resounding success, iike so many others. The error persists. I installed via xampp and wordpress and I'm running OS X. I believe I've read every article on fixing permissions but none of the solutions have worked for me, or I have some kind of coding deficiency.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

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thanatermesis August 1, 2018

The error is on wordpress side, giving useless information

Mmmh, is wordpress made by microsoft?

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coolkumarsuman September 21, 2018

use commad like this

root@server:~#chown -Rf www-data.www-data /var/www/html/

yes working fine

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vidyaac02d325b804bf40aff31 September 24, 2018

chown -Rf www-data.www-data /var/www/html/

Single command.

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