Fix WordPress Permissions

This is a post borrowed from Jeff Reifman of wpnow.io and it was very helpful! Exactly what I needed. Because it was so hard to find, I thought I'd repost it here.

If you're trying to upgrade WordPress or install a plugin and getting the "could not create directory" error, there are two levels required to solving it.

Here's an example of the error sequence:

Downloading update from http://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/your-plugin.0.9.3.1.zip… Unpacking the update… Could not create directory. /wp-content/upgrade/yourplugin.tmp Return to Plugins page

1. Web server ownership

The first level is actually to make sure that your web server has ownership over the directories:

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

2. Directory permissions

The second level is also required — you must make sure that the directory permissions are properly set:

sudo find /var/www/wordpress/ -type d -exec chmod 755 {} \;
sudo find /var/www/wordpress/ -type f -exec chmod 644 {} \;

Original post by Jeff Reifman of wpnow.io.