How to Fix Image Upload Issue in WordPress (Step by Step)

Are you facing image upload issues on your WordPress website? For most beginners, image upload errors can be quite confusing because they can appear without you doing anything different.

Failure to upload images is one of the most common image issues in WordPress. Luckily, it is quite easy to fix, and you can do it yourself.

In this article, we will show you how to easily fix the image upload issue in WordPress. We will also explain what causes this issue, and how you can prevent it in the future.

What Causes The Image Upload Issue in WordPress

The image upload issue in WordPress is typically caused by incorrect file permissions. Your WordPress files are stored on your web hosting server and need specific file and directory permissions to work.

Wrong file permissions prevent WordPress from reading or uploading file on the hosting server. You may get the following error when uploading image file:

‘Unable to create directory wp-content/uploads/2019/04. Is its parent directory writable by the server?’

Another sign of this issue is that your images may disappear from the media library.

My site was working fine before? Who changed the file permissions?

This could happen due to a number of reasons. A misconfiguration on your shared hosting server can sometimes change those permissions without you doing anything.

For example, your web hosting provider ran an upgrade which unexpectedly changed file permissions.

If everything else is working fine on your website, then you can simply apply the correct file permissions to fix the image upload issue.

That being said, let’s take a look at how to set correct file permissions to fix image upload issues in WordPress.

Fixing Image Upload Issue in WordPress

You will need to use an FTP client to change file permissions.

First, connect to your website via FTP and then go to /wp-content/ folder. Inside, you’ll find the uploads folder, which is where WordPress stores all your media uploads including images.

Now right click on the uploads directory and then select File Permissions.

This will bring up the file permissions dialog box.

First, you will need to set file permissions for the uploads directory and all the subdirectories inside it to 744.

To do that, enter 744 in the numeric value box, and then check the box next to Recurse into subdirectories option. Now click on the ‘Apply to directories only’ radio button.

Click on the OK button to apply these changes. Your FTP client will now start applying file permissions to the directories.

Note: If setting directory permissions to 744 does not seem to solve your problem, then try 755.

In the next step, you will need to set file permissions for all the files in the uploads directory.

To do that, right click on uploads directory and select file permissions. In the file permissions dialog box, change the numeric value to 644.

Check the box next to Recurse into subdirectories. Lastly, you need to click on ‘Apply to files only’ radio button. Click on the OK button to apply these changes.

The FTP client will now change the permissions for all files inside the uploads folder. Once it is done, you can go back to your WordPress admin area and try uploading images again.

Note: if you don’t know how to use a FTP client, then you can also use the file manager provided by your WordPress hosting company. Since the screenshots will vary from each host, you will need to talk to their support to find instructions.

We hope this article helped you fix the image upload issue in WordPress. You may also want to see our article on how to optimize image SEO to get more organic traffic to your website.

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