How to Fix the “Installation Failed: Could Not Create Directory.” Error in WordPress

There are three situations where this error often occurs. The first is when installing a theme/plugin, when doing a standard theme/plugin update or while attempted to upload files to the wp-content directory.

In each of these cases, the problem is the same. You need to change your website file permissions. We’ve discussed how to change the file permissions for a WordPress website in this article here.

However, you should also check that this will solve the problem. There are two ways to check this.

The first option is to use the WordPress site health tool. This was introduced in the WordPress 5.2 update. And there is a lot of information within this tool. You can access this excellent feature through the ‘Tools’ and ‘Site Health’ sections of your WordPress dashboard.

The file permissions are located within the tab that reads ‘info’. You can then scroll down to the last section. This should be labeled as ‘Filesystem Permissions’. All the WordPress files need to be listed as Writable. If they aren’t, permissions need to be changed.

You can also check your server’s error log. This can be a more effective method as it will display any error that has happened on your website. You need to access the logs through your hosting account, which can be different from host to host.