WordPress Uploads Folder can’t be Written to

This one has me stumped

I’m sure it is something really small that I am overlooking but I think I’ve been looking at it too long to see what the problem is.

WordPress is telling me:

“Upload folder is not writable. Export and file upload features will not be functional.”

Well…specifically it is Gravity Forms that is producing that error message, but uploading media isn’t working either.

Here’s what I’ve checked:

1. Uploads folder and all sub-folders permissions are set to 755
2. Uploads folder has same owner and group as every other script
3. Upload folder setting on Settings->Media page has been set to: empty and wp-content/uploads (with and without trailing slash)

I’m not sure where to go from here. What am I missing?

That’s a server permission problem. According to the WP docs:

Any file that needs write access from WordPress should be owned or
group-owned by the user account used by the WordPress (which may be
different than the server account). For example, you may have a user
account that lets you FTP files back and forth to your server, but
your server itself may run using a separate user, in a separate
usergroup, such as dhapache or nobody. If WordPress is running as the
FTP account, that account needs to have write access, i.e., be the
owner of the files, or belong to a group that has write access. In the
latter case, that would mean permissions are set more permissively
than default (for example, 775 rather than 755 for folders, and 664
instead of 644).

From http://codex.wordpress.org/Changing_File_Permissions

So you need to check with your webhost. Who is the host?

You can try setting the Gravity Forms uploads folder to 777 and try uploading, and the set them back to 755 if it works/doesn’t work. Bumping perms to 777 for a moment sometimes will toggle the correct permissions on some webhosts and then 755 will work afterward.