How to Solve This Error – Could not create directory. /public_html in WordPress

One can update WordPress, themes and plugins by two methods. By auto update method and manually. Updating manually may take more time, as you would manually need to download the latest version of theme or plugin and then upload it to your server using FTP client like FileZilla or cPanel’s file manager.

Some people may face this problem when updating WordPress, or themes or plugins.

Downloading update from http://wordpress.org/wordpress-3.1.3.zip…
Unpacking the update…
Could not create directory.: /public_html
Installation Failed

And that’s not it, sometimes the maintenance mode is not deactivated after this update process fails. So when visiting the site, you will get an error like “Maintenance Mode – SITE is currently undergoing scheduled maintenance”. This error appears on frontend, and you won’t be able to visit wp-admin also. A failed automatic update and here comes this situation. Admin and the visitors won’t be able to access the site, and this really is frustrating.

To recover the site from this situation, open your FTP client like FileZilla. Browse to your public_html, and there will be a file named as .maintenance. All you need to do is to just delete it. The site will come out of the maintenance mode.

Now its time to auto update again. But before that, follow the below steps:

1. Use FileZilla and browse to public_html/wp-content and there will be a folder named as “upgrade“.
2. Delete this “upgrade” folder
3. In the same path, again create a new folder named as “upgrade”.
4. Right click that folder and click on “File Permissions”. Apply 777 permission to this newly created folder.

So that’s done. Now you can again try auto updating that plugin, theme or WordPress. Hopefully, you won’t face the same issue again.