wordpress woocommerce product image not found 404

This post has a second title: wordpress woocommerce lessons learned

Here's a list of things I did to solve issues with images not appearing on my wordpress store which uses the woocommerce plugin:

• Properly set the 'location' block in nginx sites-available file.
• Properly define file and folder ownership and privileges in the 'wp-content/uploads'.

wordpress plugin could not create directory

I installed the WooCommerce plugin in Wordpress but got this ugly looking error:

PayPal Express Checkout could not be installed (Could not create directory.). Please install it manually by clicking here.

I solved this problem by doing this:

1. Update ownership of the plugin directory to include user and the correct group: chown -R username:www-data wp-content/plugins/
2. Update the permissions of folders and files in the woocommerce directory: chmod -R 775 wp-content/plugins/woocommerce/

Problem solved. I deactivated and then re-activated the plugin and the error went away with Paypal express installed :)