Sometimes the best solution to a complex problem is simply simple.
A while ago I wrote a post The Uploaded File Could Not Be Moved To [Unsolved] out of sheer frustration. I almost jumped out of my window when everything I had done produced no result at all. You wouldn’t imagine how joyful I was when I finally able to fix the issue I wouldn’t ever think it was that simple.
So I thought I share this out of goodwill, should you also be in a similar situation as I was.
When all things failed, here’s what I did

Under Settings > Miscellaneous, I did the unthinkable of un-ticking ‘Organize my uploads into month- and year-based folders’. No editing of .htaccess or modifying mod_security or whatever technical jargon it may be. It is just that easy. If only my curiosity really kill the cat on that miserable day…
Don’t ask me why, I really do not know the reason why it works that way, I hope someone will enlighten me with that. But what the heck, I solved the problem. Everything else matters less now.
I am just wondering if there is anyone having similar issue like me and solve the puzzle using the above method. Or is there any reasonable way of doing it?
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{ 7 comments }
Ah! Sweet perfection. Thank you so much for posting this! :-) Worked like a charm. I needed to change the permissions when transferring a http://www.wordpress.com blog to a http://www.wordpress.org blog and encountered what was essentially the same problem. Thank you once again. You’ve inspired me to write a post detailing the solution to my problem and your site is going to be the first thing I credit!
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Thank you very much!!!
I have just spent the last 4 hours googling the web to find an answer. I had my blog on a hosted server and just got my own VPS. After a fresh install of Wordpress 2.6.2, I couldn’t import posts, upload images, etc.. I saw quite a few people having the same problem and the common answer was “change your file permissions”. That didn’t work for me either. I was about to do a clean WP install…
…And then I found your post.
I found I checked that box in my setup. Unchecking took everything back to normal.
Again…thank you!!!!!!
I’m glad it work for you as this little trick works on a few privileged ones only and I could understand how frustrating it was going back and forth the search engines for the answer.
It was more like an accidental “trial and error” sort of thing so it isn’t the official fix but who cares, it works for both of us, doesn’t it?
Wow, thank you. My contents were writable, everything was as should be and suddenly I couldn’t upload pics anymore. I tried this thinking “I won’t be so lucky”… but it worked!
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we have to admit the fact that nobody’s perfect like computers.. with your blog i have conclude that even the best creation of man will also be not perfect like the creator.. there are many problems errors and bugs in using the internet that is really hard to fix, one best example is the image upload problem.. i have said this because i also encountered this error.. we’ll definitely its hard for me to fix.. the comments would be a great idea for me.. thanks for the concerns and good luck.. =)
Its really hard to fix, but what if I don’t want to change the folder to uploads, I mean the default way wordpress saves the files in separate folders which don’t make too much of mess and images of each month are easily managed in a good way.
Also some suggestions say to change permissions to 777 which is not good idea as this incorporates the security hole to your site. Files with 777 can be easily accessed/changed by any user at that shared server.
Thanks for your post. After doing the changes and changing the permission on the folder, it worked for me…
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