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/

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

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:

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/

thanks, this is work :)

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.

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

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

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

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

Thanks!!!!!

not working

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?

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.

The error is on wordpress side, giving useless information

Mmmh, is wordpress made by microsoft?

use commad like this

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

yes working fine

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

Single command.

Hi, a bit late reply but still might be helpful to someone.

It depends if you have previously added your own user and changed the permissions of the folders and files.

If everything is by default and configuration changes were made, you can try

chown -Rf www-data.www-data /var/www/html/ (for Ubuntu with Nginx)
chown -R nginx.nginx /var/www/ (for CentOS with Nginx)

But then you might need to edit anything from the command line with sudo

Also, you can set the permissions for your user and give the files and directories the following ownership not to use the sudo command
Considering that the location of your WordPress installation is in /var/www/yoursitename/public_html, if it’s any different, please replace accordingly to match your directory structure

sudo chown -Rf yourusername:www-data /var/www/yoursitefolder/public_html/
sudo find /var/www/yoursitefolder/public_html -type d -exec chmod 755 {} \;
sudo find /var/www/yoursitefolder/public_html -type f -exec chmod 644 {} \;
sudo find /var/www/yoursitefolder/public_html/wp-content/ -type d -exec chmod 775 {} \;
sudo find /var/www/yoursitefolder/public_html/wp-content/ -type f -exec chmod 664 {} \;

The first 3 commands will give you the permissions to the WordPress files and directories, and the last 2 commands will give permission for the server.

Also, it is considered a good practice to secure your wp-config.php configuration file.

If you have changed anything in the Nginx or PHP configuration files, in order to reflect the changes you will need to restart the fastcgi service (for example for the PHP7.4) with

sudo systemctl restart php7.4-fpm.service

otherwise it will keep on asking you for your FTP credentials.

And you should be able to normally use the wp-admin from the browser and install/update plugins and themes, as well as edit and change anything inside your site directory as your user without the sudo command.