It seems that many people have this problem, where they are unable to upload media to their blog. Judging from the results on Google, this seems to happen with WordPress installs of version 2.5 and above. So you write a post and you would like to add an image or video to your page or post. You receive a message that “../wp-content/uploads/2009/month” cannot be accessed, is the parent directory writable?

There are many, many questions and answers about this topic and most of them are about changing file permission settings. This usually involves a lot of work and changing file permissions often does not work.

The problem really is not so much with WordPress, as with the security settings of your server. This problem may be triggered if you install WordPress in your root folder. Everything will work fine, however, as soon as you try to upload media, you’ll run into this problem.

So, here is the solution that works best (for now):

• Make sure that “wp-content” is at least writable by “group”
• Manually create a folder “uploads” and assign permissions “777“
• Go to the miscellaneous settings of your blog admin panel
• For uploads folder, enter “wp-content/uploads“
• Leave the other box blank and un-check “organize my uploads into month- and year-based folders”

You should now be able to upload media to your blog. When you’re done, I would suggest you change the file permissions of the “uploads” folder back to a safer setting (755).