Problems with image upload in WordPress can manifest in different ways:
- Images on your site are no longer displaying
- You can’t upload media files to your site
- When the upload does go through, the image is displayed as broken
- The entire media library is not displaying properly
Neither is a very fun situation but usually the fix is not very complicated.
Solution
Image upload issues are almost always due to faulty file and folder permissions which prohibit WordPress from properly accessing them.
Changes to permission levels can happen due to a mistake on the provider’s site, a faulty plugin or when you site gets hacked.
Most of the time, it’s harmless but annoying. Yet, with our crafty FTP client we can change the file permissions back in no time.
Fire up Filezilla and find the uploads folder inside wp-content. Right click it and choose File permissions.
First, we will set the upload directory itself and all folders contained within to permission level 744.
To do so, enter this number into the field at the bottom. Then, choose “Recurse into subdirectories” and “Apply to directories only” further below.
Hit OK and the FTP client will apply the correct file permissions to your directories.
After that, we need to do the same process for the files. However, this time we will choose permission level 644, check to recurse into subdirectories and enable to “apply to files only”.
Hit the OK button and wait until the process is done. Now your image upload problems should be a matter of the past.
Note: If the problem persists, try setting the permissions for directories to 755 instead of 744.
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