WordPress is popular CMS. Due to its ease of access, it has maintained its position as one of the top platforms for building websites among beginners.

But as your WordPress site grows, it becomes prone to many major errors like the ‘dns probe finished nxdomain ’ and ‘’Installation Failed Could Not Create Directory. Some of these errors are highly depressing and annoying as you need to have proper technical knowledge in order to get rid of them and restore your WordPress site.

In this read, we’ll explain how you can resolve ‘Installation Failed Could Not Create Directory’ error.

Let’s begin.

One of the very common causes of “Installation failed: Could not create directory error,” is your WordPress website’s permission settings. However, there are a few more reasons why you could potentially fall prey to this.

Here they are.

What Causes the “Installation Failed: Could Not Create Directory.” Error in WordPress?
Now, typically there are 3 conditions that cause “Installation Failed: Could Not Create Directory.” Error. These conditions are

– Installing a plugin or theme using WordPress Dashboard.
– Updating a plugin or theme.
– Uploading files to the wp-content directory on the server.

Here’s how to solve this annoying error.

How To Diagnose This Error?

WordPress site health is a gem of a tool, having all the valuable information like security checks, site performance, and configuration data.

To diagnose the “Installation failed: Could not create directory” error using the WordPress site tool

1. Go to the Tools section in your WordPress dashboard and select Site Health.
2. Now click on the Info tab to check your file Permission Settings.
3. Drop down the File Permission settings and toggle the permission for each WordPress plugin and theme to Writable.

How To Fix “Installation failed: Could not create directory” Error?

As we’ve mentioned above that the root cause of “Installation failed: Could not create directory” error on WordPress is your incorrect website permissions, therefore, it can easily be solved by resetting the site’s performance. Here’s how you can easily fix this error.
Before you start troubleshooting “Installation failed: Could not create directory” error, it is important to backup your website data so that you can recover it in case of any unfortunate case.

1. Connect to your server using your FTP credentials and access public_html
2. Now, select the folders labeled as wp_content, wp_includes, and wp_admin.
3. Right-click on the folders and select File Permissions.

A window will appear with multiple settings. In this window, you’ll need to make sure that the following permissions are set to these values.

– Owner Permissions: Read, Write, Execute.
– Group Permissions: Read, Execute.
– Public Permissions: Read, Execute.
– Numeric value: 755.
– Recurse into subdirectories.
– Apply to directories only.

Once you’ve set these settings, click on the Ok button and return to your site. Refresh your site and try installing a plugin or theme. You’ll see that the “Installation failed: Could not create directory” error on WordPress is gone.