Sometimes, especially with new WordPress installations, there can be problems uploading images into posts. You may be trying to upload and insert images into your posts or pages, but the images won’t upload or insert. Often you’ll get an error message. One common-looking error message is shown below:
Following the below steps will correct almost all image uploading problems:
Step 1: Check your file type
WordPress will only accept .jpg, .gif or .png file types when uploading an image, so check to make sure that the file you’re trying to upload is one of these three file types. If not, you will most likely get an error message, like so:
Go back and re-save your image as one of the acceptable file types and try uploading again.
Step 2: Check your upload path
To set your upload path correctly, in your WordPress admin area, go to “Settings” > “Media”.
Verify that it says EXACTLY “wp-content/uploads“. If it doesn’t, change it so it does. Then whether you’ve had to change it OR NOT, click “save changes”.
Step 3: Check for and change permissions of “uploads” folder
Sometimes something won’t work right because ProPhoto and WordPress can’t create a folder it needs called “uploads“. Or, other times, the folder is there, but ProPhoto can’t write to it.
To fix this problem, connect to your blog’s web hosting server via FTP and make sure there is an “uploads” folder inside of the “wp-content” folder. If there isn’t, create one. Either way, if you’ve just created it, or if it was there, set the “uploads” folder’s permissions to “777″.
The below video shows how to create and change the permissions of the “wp-content/uploads” folder:
Step 4: [optional] Change uploads folder organization
If steps 1, 2 and 3 don’t fix your problem (which is rare), then try these two things in order.
Step 4a: in your WordPress admin area, go to “Settings” > “Medias” and uncheck the box that says “organize my uploads into month- and year-based folders” and then save. Try uploading images again and see if it works. Still no joy? You’re a problem child. Try the next step:
Step 4b: undo what you did in Step 4a above, re-checking the box and saving. Then create a folder named the current year (i.e. “2009″) with 12 folders inside it named “01″ through “12″. Then upload this year-named folder into your “wp-content/uploads” folder. After uploading, set the permissions of the year-named folder and all it’s contents to 777. This process is shown in the video below. After you’ve don it, try uploading images again.
