Unable to create directory wp-content in WordPress in a windows server 2016

I had a similar issue with a Google Cloud Engine Instance, with no cPanel, no phpMyAdmin and FTP, on Ubuntu and Apache. And I solved this way:

1. Define upload folders on wp-config.php

Open wp-config.php with nano or vim and add the following code

define( 'UPLOADS', 'wp-content/uploads' );

before this line:

require_once(ABSPATH . 'wp-settings.php');

and save it.

2. Change owner

Change to wp-content directory. In my case (use your own path):

cd /var/www/html/wp-content

Next, change the owner to www-data

chown -R www-data:www-data plugins

Why www-data? In my case, is the name of the apache service account running on my server. You can check the name with:

ps aux | egrep '(apache|httpd)'

that comand returns some like this:

www-data  5441  0.0  5.8 566184 34896 ?        S    06:34   0:00 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k startwww-data  7753  0.0  5.9 566248 35512 ?        S    09:00   0:00 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k startwww-data  9840  0.0  5.7 566160 34320 ?        S    11:21   0:00 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k startwww-data 21068  0.0  6.2 564032 37192 ?        S    18:22   0:00 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k startwww-data 21069  0.0  6.0 563692 35636 ?        S    18:22   0:00 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k startroot     21455  0.0  0.1  13208  1036 pts/1    S+   18:44   0:00 grep -E --color=auto (apache|httpd)root     31982  0.0  1.1 485904  6872 ?        Ss   Jan03   0:18 /usr/sbin/apache2 -k start

as you see, root and www-data. Maybe with windows server the account will be different (tasklist? pslist?), i don't know how to get it (I never used windows server, sorry). I Hope www-data works for you.

Finally, make sure uploads folder had the right permissions

chmod 755 -R uploads

3. Grant to that user rights to use Wordpress

To html or public_html folder (in my case /var/www/html, change it for your own path)

chown -R www-data /var/www/html

And voilà. I hope this little guide was useful, or at least, give you ideas to solve it!

One possible issue is your chmod settings for folder wp-content. You may need to change chmod for the wp-content or it's parent directory to allow the creation of any folder/file and child folder/file within that directory.

Depending on which windows application you are using to set the chmod, would determine how this process is undertaken. I use FileZilla and you can simply -

Right Click on wp-content, select File Attributes, and set Numeric value: 755.

In addition, have you considered using a third-party webserver like XAMPP?

Well friends said about putting permissions on directories ...But on Windows there is a difference between Linux, what I recommend is to put WP-content (just this folder) as chmod 0777 and so in the current upload folder (2020) as chmod 0777.That should do it. And even if you see that there is advice to always put 0755 I advise you to leave it specifically in these folders.

Make a backup before any changes and I believe it will help you are managing to upload

a good alternative is every month that WordPress creates a new folder for that month then you change the folder permission to 0755 according to the month ended so it helps Ah you have more confidence in the security issue