“Private root directory is missing”

Hi @adjunkten

To make sure Private uploads are private on any webserver (Apache, Nginx, IIS..), just like you would secure your wp-config.php file putting it one level up your site’s root directory, you need to create a buddypress-private directory one level up your site’s root directory.

Let’s say on your host your site’s tree is looking like this:

/srv/www/wp-admin
/srv/www/wp-content
/srv/www/wp-includes
/srv/www/...

You need to put the buddypress-private one level up www like this /srv/buddypress-private. Once done you’ll see other admin notices that will explain you how to make files inside this directory writable by the server’s user. This resolved issue might help you configure the private directory: https://github.com/buddypress/bp-attachments/issues/53

• This reply was modified 1 year, 11 months ago by Mathieu Viet.

Thanks for the answer.

I see the point with ‘one level up’, but my root directory is ‘/nas/content/live/dhta’ according to my host support.. I use WP Engine. Is the problem that I am on shared hosting?

When I create the folder ‘buddypress-private’ in my root folder, I get the same error.

Even so, I am able to upload media, and I see it in my ‘media – personal’ folder.

@imath my shared server does not allow to make a folder on that level

@adjunkten in your case you should create the directory to get this path:

/nas/content/live/buddypress-private

@joost-abrahams you can always override the BP Attachments private directory path using the bp_attachments_pre_get_private_root_dir filter. Here’s an example of use:

https://gist.github.com/imath/13a6b03a6ec9c362818d1045c64bba2d

I have added the custom code that makes a different private directory path – but then the user’s files are not very private … they can be accesed by the file url.

Can this be fixed?