Wordpress Plugin Installation Errors
When installing plugins in a WordPress® environment that you already configured in your
web server, the system might issue the following error: the installation failed because a
directory could not be created. This article presents basic troubleshooting for this issue.
Permissions
Check if permissions allow WordPress to write files to the server. You can see the required
permissions for files and directories in the WordPress documentation.
Note: Do not set 777 permissions on the WordPress project folder or the wp-config.php file.
Modify the wp-config.php file
Check if WordPress has the proper FTP or SSL credentials. The wp-config.php file must contain the following lines:
define('FS_METHOD', 'ftpext');
define('FTP_USER', 'username');
define('FTP_PASS', 'password');
define('FTP_HOST', 'ftp.example.org');
define('FTP_SSL', false);
The FS_METHOD attribute defines the filesystem method. The ftpext
method forces the usage of the FTP-PHP extension for access through FTP.
The FTP_HOST attribute is the hostname:port combination for the SSH or
FTP server. When using FTP, the default port is 21, and for SSH the default
port is 22. If you are using these ports, do not specify them in the FTP_HOST
attribute.
If your server supports SSL connection by the underlying transport, you can
set the FTP_SSL attribute to TRUE. This is for Secure FTP, not for SSH-SFTP.
You can also add the following line to the wp-config.php file:
define('FS_METHOD', 'direct');
By setting the FS_METHODattribute to direct, the filesystem method forces
Direct File I/O requests within PHP. Note that this solution might cause
security issues on poorly configured hosts.
For more options to edit the wp-config.php file, refer to
editing the wp-config file
in the WordPress documentation.
Check the WordPress installation
If the instructions provided in this article do not solve the issue, check that the
WordPress installation does not have a corrupted core or corrupted configuration files.
Related articles
Use the Feedback tab to make any comments or ask questions. You can also start a conversation with us.
Updated 12 months ago