You may have tried uploading images, themes, or plugins onto your WordPress site but got the error alert “Missing a temporary folder“; it’s simple. But first, understand that WordPress stores its uploads into folders, so when errors like this show up it simply means that the folder is missing on not named properly.

The guide on this page shows you a complete step to get the WordPress upload error “Missing a temporary folder” resolved.

How to get the “Missing a temporary folder” error resolved

1. Log in to your site hosting account and navigate to the public_html file, open it.
2. Among the list of files you have, look for the wp-config.php file then open it.

While opening the wp-config.php file, depending on the type of hosting service you’re using, a popup appears to confirm and provide an option to disable encoding. Click on the Edit button, and a new tab opens up in the web browser.

3. Then add the code shown below in the file and click on the Save Changes button from the top-right corner.

define('WP_TEMP_DIR', dirname(__FILE__) . '/wp-content/temp/');

4. Now, on the same page directory, go to the wp-content folder

The code above shows that you’ve defined the temporary folder which is the “temp”, now it’s time to create the Temp Folder inside wp-content.

5. Still on the same page of your site directory, open the wp-content directory, because that’s where you’ll be creating a new folder.
6. Look up the page bar then navigate to the +Folder link in the cPanel navigation menu.
7. A popup appears asking you to fill in the name of the folder. Of course, you already know that the name should be “temp“, then click on the Create New Folder button.
8. Now refresh the page to see the new folder.
9. Henceforth, try uploading anything on your WordPress website again and if the error doesn’t show up then you have successfully WordPress Upload Error “Missing a temporary folder” issue.

Congrats!

However, if after these processes and you’re still unable to upload files to your website then you need to update the PHP version of the domain to the recent and the files should definitely start uploading without any errors.

Hope this page was helpful.