Problem Updating WordPress, Themes and Plugins

By | January 23, 2014

You are trying to Update WordPress CMS, Themes and Plugins to the latest Version on Ubuntu Web Server, and you encounter error messages similar to the following:

  1. To perform the requested action, WordPress needs to access your web server. Please enter your FTP credentials to proceed. If you do not remember your credentials, you should contact your web host.
  2. Could not create directory. wp-content/upgrade/xxx.tmp
  3. removing the old version of the plugin… could not remove the old plugin. plugin update failed.
  4. an error occurred while updating twenty eleven: could not remove the old theme..
  5. The list goes on …etc

Resolution that worked for me:

You need to set the proper filesystem privileges:

Access your Ubuntu Web server through SSH and then run this command

en-01#chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/mysite/public_html

Thats all!