How To Fix WordPress Error “Unable to create directory” and/or “Is its parent directory writable by the server?”.

So I moved a WordPress blog from a Windows IIS install over to an Apple OS X 10.6 Apache install and ran into a couple of errors when trying to upload images via the WordPress media manager.  First error was the “Unable to create directory” message and it basically came down to the setting under Miscellaneous config screen had migrated the Windows IIS C:\… path setting.  So by changing that to “wp-content/uploads” resolved the first error message.

Second set of error messages were the “Is its parent directory writable by the server?” and “The uploaded file could not be moved to error”.  These were resolved via SSH to the Apple OS X Server and doing a chmod 755 on /library/webserver/documents/{your site name}/wp-content.  After that do a chmod -R 777 on the uploads directory within the wp-content folder.

This resolved my issues and allow me to once again upload images via the WordPress media manager.  Below are the step-by-step instructions I followed.

1. Log into WordPress.
2. Go to your Settings and then Miscellaneous config screen.
3. Examine the directory parameter for uploads. It should be “wp-content/uploads”.
4. Remove the leading and trailing slash “/” if they are there.
5. make your wp-content folder 755
6. inside wp-content create a new folder called “uploads”, make it 777