I have talked with my host provider (the company that built the site for me) and have been informed that I have full access to cPanel. I still cannot update or add anything to my site (or change most file permissions). Now I get an error message that says “Could not create directory.: /public_html” am I making progress?
When WordPress asks for FTP credentials for upgrades is that the same as cPanel login info, or how do I know that the login information is correct? Is there a way for me to verify that I have administrative access?
Could it be that my FTP program is not compatible with an automatic upgrade (the company told me that they always upgrade manually), I have also tried a manual upgrade and could not remove the necessary files prior to re-installing them (I tried to re-install anyway and it didn’t change anything), is that possibly because my Filezilla is not set up properly? Thanks in advance
Now I get an error message that says “Could not create directory.: /public_html”
Point your hosts at this thread: http://wordpress.org/support/topic/30-upgrade-bug-ftps
When WordPress asks for FTP credentials for upgrades is that the same as cPanel login info
Not necessarily…
Could it be that my FTP program is not compatible with an automatic upgrade
More likely, your server isn’t – as per the thread link I gave above.
Can you upload new themes to your site’s wp-content/themes folder using FTP?
I will try to upload themes soon, in the meantime this is the new message when I tried to download a plugin update
Downloading update from http://downloads.wordpress.org/plugin/wordpress-importer.0.4.zip…
Unpacking the update…
Installing the latest version…
Deactivating the plugin…
Removing the old version of the plugin…
Could not remove the old plugin.
Plugin update failed.
Is this a common error message? Should I try to update WordPress prior to updating the plugins?
No – it’s not a particularly common message. I suspect there’s something wrong with folder ownership on this site. That’s something controlled by your hosts – not you.