How to Fix Could not Create Directory - Plugin install Failed error

You may have seen this strange issue on your dashboard when you tried to add a new plugin or update an existing plugin. The Plugin install error may look like

Downloading install package from xxxxxxxxxxx
Unpacking the package.
Installing the plugin.
Could not create directory. /public_html/wp-conten/plugins/xxxxxx
Plugin Install Failed.

If the issue is with a plugin upgrade, you will be seeing a different error like below

Downloading update from http://downloads.wordpress.org/xxxx.zip
Unpacking the update
Deactivating the plugin
Removing the old version of the plugin
Could not remove the old plugin
Plugin upgrade Failed

What does this mean?

It simply means that wordpress is not getting the required permission to create/modify the folder. There is nothing much to talk about this issue. You can try the following fixes and it should work! Yes, we are going to fix Plugin Install Failed or Plugin Upgrade Failed error!

Fix 1: Check if folder exists

Go to wp-content folder and see if plugins folder is there. One of my clients had the same issue; I looked up in wp-content folder and found that plugins folder was named to plugins1 by someone. You may have done this folder renaming when you were testing something. When we find some issues with a wordpress installation, we usually try renaming the plugins folder to something else to see if the issue is with plugins or not. So you may have renamed this folder before.

Fix 2: Check folder permission

Make sure that your plugins folder has 755 permission. plugins folder is located at wp-content/plugins. Also make sure that all folders has 755 permissions, except uploads folder has 777 permission. If you do not know how to change folder permissions, you may need to contact your hosting support to do this. If you are using ftp, just right click on the folder and you will see the option to set folder permissions.

Fix 3: Check with the host

If the above fixes didn’t work, you have to contact your host’s support and see what happens. Some hosts have bad configuration. So the issue can be with the host too.