How to enable the zip extension

I’ve been designing websites with WordPress for about four years now. Never had a class and I am totally self taught. Everyday I think I learn a little bit more about WordPress that I didn’t know the day before. Whenever possible I should take a moment to document what I learned and help those who struggle with errors.

Today I came across a bump in the road when I was importing a template with a new plugin. I won’t tell you the name of the plugin because I found the answer on a non-related site. Awesome plugin though I thought I made a bad mistake at first. Here are the steps I to to resolve the error along with the screenshots.

PHP ZipArchive Error

First, I needed access my cPanel where the website was hosted. If you are like me, this doesn’t scare me, but I am not an expert with cPanel. I wanted to be careful to not break my site, so please use caution when you are changing configurations.

Second, go to the Software section and click on “Select PHP Version”

Select PHP Version

Then check the box next to “zip” and save.

Check the box located on the right side next to zip

You may need to restart your PHP processes for the change to take effect though I didn’t need to. Here is a wonderful article from Godaddy about restarting PHP just i case you need to.

Lastly, I tried to import a new template and it worked! I was so exited that I didn’t break anything.

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