The Uploaded file could not be moved to WP-Content/Uploads: Alright, so it looks like that you tried uploading a Media file to your WordPress website. Maybe you were adding it to your post, or changing or whatever the case might be but the thing is that your WordPress website won’t let you upload media files anymore. Because as soon as you try it, you are welcomed with an error.

An error saying ‘The Uploaded file could not be moved to WP-Content/Uploads’ which is quite annoying but you cannot blame wordpress . Because there is a valid reason behind this error and in this post, we would be covering exactly how to fix ‘The Uploaded file could not be moved to WP-Content/Uploads’ error on your WordPress website. Now if that sounds interesting, let us hop right into the guide. Should we?
The Uploaded file could not be moved to WP-Content/Uploads Error
Before we jump right into How to fix or solve ‘The Uploaded file could not be moved to WP-Content/Uploads’ error on your WordPress website, let us first take a quick look at what actually causes this error to occur so you know why WordPress greeted with you such a beautiful yet annoying error message.
What causes this error?
The image upload error issue in WordPress websites are usually caused due to incorrect file and folder permissions. For those of you who don’t already know, your media files are stored in the WP-Content/Uploads directory and if the permissions for this folder is not set correctly, it is more likely to cause an error like ‘The Uploaded file could not be moved to WP-Content/Uploads’.

When a folder has wrong permissions, it sometimes prevents certain user groups from accessing or modifying the contents of the same. This in turn can throw an error which says something like ‘Unable to create directory wp-content/uploads/2021/10. Is its parent directory writable by the server?’.
With that being clear, that being said, let us now take a look at How to fix The Uploaded file could not be moved to WP-Content/Uploads Error on your WordPress website. Should we?
How to solve The Uploaded file could not be moved to WP-Content/Uploads Error on your WordPress website?
There are 2 Different methods which you can use in order to fix The Uploaded file could not be moved to WP-Content/Uploads Error on your WordPress website. You should try the first method which is by Fixing File Permissions first and then if it does not work out for you, give second method a try. With that being said, let us now take a look at our First Method. Should we?
Method 1: Using File Manager
Let us first take a look at our first method which is using File Manager or any FTP Client like Filezilla or any other FTP software. With that being said, let us now take a look at the steps to fix The Uploaded file could not be moved to WP-Content/Uploads Error. Should we?
Here are the steps which you need to perform in order to fix The Uploaded file could not be moved to WP-Content/Uploads Error:
Step 1: Login to your cPanel

Login to your Hosting Account and click on Login to cPanel. Alternatively, if you have the cPanel credentials, you can simply go over to yourdomain.com/cpanel URL and login from there.
If you don’t have the credentials or are using a VPS, use an FTP program and connect it to your VPS.
Step 2: Fix Folder and File Permissions

The next step is to Fix the Folder and File permissions, to do so:
– Go to public_html (or your domain’s root folder) > wp-content.
– Here, right click on uploads folder and make sure that the permissions are set to 755 as in the screenshot above.
Step 3: Save the changes and retry upload
Once you have set the permissions to 755, Save the changes and try reuploading your media file. This time, hopefully, you should not get any error.
Does the The Uploaded file could not be moved to WP-Content/Uploads Error still persists? Don’t worry, try our next method which is using SSH.
Method 2: Using SSH Shell Access
Do note that this method is for Advanced users and includes the usage of SSH Terminal. You should proceed with this method only if you really know what you are doing. With that being said, let us take a look at the steps to Fix The Uploaded file could not be moved to WP-Content/Uploads Error using SSH Access. Should we?
Steps to fix The Uploaded file could not be moved to WP-Content/Uploads Error using SSH Access
- First of all, you need to make sure that you have SSH Access to your server. In most cases, if you are using a VPS Provider, the chances are that you do have SSH Access. If you are using Shared Hosting, you might wanna get in touch with your hosting provider and ask them to fix this error for you.
- Once you have the SSH Access, connect your SSH Client like Putty to your server.
- Now, you need to enter the following command in your terminal and press Enter
ps aux | egrep ‘(apache|httpd)’
- This will show what user apache is running as. Usually nobody. Now, you need to enter the following command, do note that you need to replace serverusername with your server username.
chown -R nobody /home/_serverusername_/public_html
- That’s it, now retry uploading your desired media file to your wordpress website and you should not see any error.
Are you on DigitalOcean VPS? The Uploaded file could not be moved to WP-Content/Uploads error is quite common among DigitalOcean users. And the solution is quite simple actually.
Steps to fix for DigitalOcean
In order to fix The Uploaded file could not be moved to WP-Content/Uploads Error on DigitalOcean server, you need to follow these steps carefully:
- First of all, you need to connect your SSH Client like Putty to your server.
- Now, simply type in the following command and press Enter.
sudo chown -R www-data /var/www/html/wp-content/uploads
- That’s it, now retry uploading your desired media file to your wordpress website and you should not see any error.
But I am not familiar with SSH, can you guys do it for me?
Are you someone who is not familiar with SSH Terminal or are afraid of messing thingd when trying doing things on your own? Well, if that is the case, then we can help you out with the same. Feel free to reach out to us.
To conclude, this post shares how you could fix The Uploaded file could not be moved to WP-Content/Uploads Error. That’s it for this tutorial, let us know if you have any questions or issues regarding the same. We would love to help you out.