Resolving FAILED (Upload folder could not be created.)

While this isn't the most elegant solution, I have managed to make a work-around for my environment that solves this issue and a related one of not being able to create export .csv files. Basically I commented out any of the plugins attempts to create sub-folders to the /wp-content/uploads/gravity_forms folder and let it do all the file creation within that folder.

To do so, I made the following changes in /wp-content/gravityforms/forms_model.php that start at around line 1075 in version 1.3.10.

public static function get_upload_path($form_id){
	  //return self::get_upload_root() . $form_id;
	   return self::get_upload_root();
}

public static function get_upload_url($form_id){
        $dir = wp_upload_dir();
        //return $dir["baseurl"] . "/gravity_forms/$form_id";
	   return $dir["baseurl"] . "/gravity_forms/";
}

The last one is a little longer function so more written instruction than copy/paste
Find public static function get_file_upload_path($form_id, $file_name) {

Comment / replace the $target_root and $target_rool_url lines below:

//$target_root = self::get_upload_path($form_id) . "/$y/$m/";
	   $target_root = self::get_upload_path($form_id);
        //$target_root_url = self::get_upload_url($form_id) . "/$y/$m/";
	   $target_root_url = self::get_upload_url($form_id);

Comment out the attempted directory creation directly below

//if(!wp_mkdir_p($target_root))
            //return false;

I still can't answer WHY my environment won't allow those folders to be created even though it appears everything has proper permissions to do so, which sucks from an ongoing upgrade perspective. But this does work for the time being.

Does this help with a potential fix for it?

Is there anything other than turning PHP Safe Mode off that will fix this?

I recreated the uploads/gravity_forms directory and set permissions at 777, but it doesn't work.

I'll have to switch servers to be able to turn safe mode off, and I don't love the sound of what my host says about it:

In a shared hosting environment such as we offer, keeping everyone's web site safe and secure is of vital importance. We have carefully constructed our PHP 5 Fast environment to make your site and its files as secure as possible while still running at maximum performance, and PHP's safe_mode is currently one of the many essential components of that environment.

We do offer PHP 5 Flex, which is a way to run PHP without safe_mode restrictions in our CGI environment. If the need is great, PHP 5 Flex should be compatible with certain legacy applications (e.g. Gallery) that malfunction if safe_mode is enabled, but it generally runs at least 3-10 times slower than PHP 5 Fast.

Most people who choose PHP 5 Flex do so for the wrong reasons. It can mask the existence of certain problems and thus sometimes appears to be an easy way to make broken things appear to work. Due to the severe performance penalty, we strongly recommend against using PHP 5 Flex to circumvent open_basedir() restrictions or PHP file permissions issues. Problems with open_basedir are almost always caused by incorrect path configurations or depending on bad default paths, issues which are typically very easy to resolve under PHP 5 Fast. File permissions issues merely require a basic understanding of the Unix owner/group file permissions system. If you use PHP 5 Flex to solve the problem instead, you will destroy the performance of your site for no reason. See Writing Files in PHP for more information.

Thanks for the link! I will contact my host and see what they plan to do about it. Won't be very happy if they don't upgrade PHP because of that.