WordPress Updates Permissions Error [FIXED]

May 16, 2018

Recently, I moved a WordPress site from one host to another. It was a fairly small site with a handful of plugins, but I wanted to make sure that everything was up-to-date after moving the site. First things first, I ran plugin updates, but that’s where I ran into this issue:
The update cannot be installed because we will be unable to copy some files. This is usually due to inconsistent file permissions.: wp-admin/includes/update-core.php
Installation Failed

Ugh.

Turns out, I needed to change my file and folder permissions to get the updates to complete successfully.

TL;DR

Folders need to be set to 775 and files to 664.

Using the Command Line

If you have command line access, you can also run the following commands:

Folders to 775

find /path/to/site/ -type d -exec chmod 775 {} \;

Files to 664

find /path/to/site/ -type f -exec chmod 664 {} \;

Bonus

You may also need to reset the group to the wordpress group or something that makes sense for you.

chgrp -R wordpress /path/to/site/

Once you do that, you should have no problem updating your WordPress plugins!

Wanna chat about this article or any others? Feel free to DM me or mention me on Twitter @marcusdburnette to start a conversation!

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