When Wordpress fails to upgrade or install plugins

This is almost always caused by a problem with permissions, luckily configuring permissions for Wordpress is incredibly easy to do, and this guide will quickly run through the steps to set it up properly!

Set Wordpress permissions correctly

Wordpress is a very robust and advanced piece of web software and all of the files that need to be writable are kept tidy inside the wp-content folder, if you create an FTP connection to your site using an FTP client like Filezilla, and then find the wp-content folder, right-click on this folder and change the permissions on this folder all sub-folders and files to 777.

Remove failed installations

When Wordpress attempts but fails to install a plugin, it leaves behind some files that need to be deleted, otherwise they will interfere with any future attempts to install or upgrade the same Wordpress plugin. You can do this by moving into the wp-content/upgrade folder and deleting anything in this folder, also delete anything that is not a named after a year in the wp-content/uploads.

Perform the install/upgrade

You should now be able to install or upgrade your Wordpress plugins, doing this will require a valid FTP account details, we email these to you when you set up the hosting account on our servers, if you do not recall them, you can get them from your client area at: http://clients.hostingireland.ie in the account details for the hosting account, which is found in the manage services area.

Further reading

If you have any further issues with Wordpress, you should contact the support community behind the software, Wordpress documentation and a Wordpress forum are both very helpful.