Plugins not showing in dashboard so you can activate them.

I have the exact same problem. It is so frustrating. Can someone please help!

There’s a few things that could answer those questions:
1) You didn’t upload any plugin;
2) You uploaded them to the wrong folder;
3) You put them “nested” like in wp-content/plugins/plugin-name/plugin-name/plugin-files, or wp-content/plugins/plugin-files (plugin not in its own folder).

If it’s neither of these possibilities, I can’t think off any reason.

To answer your comment:

1) You didn’t upload any plugin;
Plugin is defiantly there

2) You uploaded them to the wrong folder;
/wordpress/wp-content/plugins (folder is correct)

3) You put them “nested”;
They have their own folder and are not /plugin-name/plugin-name as would result from the unzip, also is in its own folder just like the two plugins that came w/ the install

STILL NEED A RESOLUTION TO MY PROBLEM

You tell me know one here has a clue what I’m talking about. I cannot believe no one else has not seen this, or do you all let someone else set wordpress up for you. Thanks to those who tried by the way.

It’s not that nobody ever has this problem, but it’s usually one of the things I said above. If it isn’t, I don’t have clue what could be it.
You don’t have two WP’s on your server by accident?
You can see them in your FTP client (or how do you upload them?)?

My server is at my home, so I have direct access.
I did get to wondering if permissions were and issue and this is what I saw:

drwxr-xr-x 2 hemlock root 4096 2008-09-08 14:28 akismet
drwx—— 2 hemlock hemlock 4096 2008-09-10 19:17 countdown-timer
drwx—— 2 hemlock hemlock 4096 2008-09-10 19:17 ebibleicious
drwx—— 6 hemlock hemlock 4096 2008-09-10 18:59 events-calendar
drwx—— 3 hemlock hemlock 4096 2008-09-10 19:17 quotes-collection
drwx—— 2 hemlock hemlock 4096 2008-09-10 19:17 sms-text-message

The plugin that came with the WordPress install “akismet” has read, write, and execute for owner, execute, read for group, and execute for others. One other thing “akismet’s” group is “root.” The owner and group are the same for the plugins I added. The permissions that where added to the plugins I added only have permissions for the owner. Could that be a problem? The owner controls the sql database and the WordPress installation. I only have one WordPress installation. Below are the permissions for my folders/directories. Later today I will try to give the same permissions to my plugins as “akismet” that came with the install.

drwxr-xr-x 4 hemlock root 4096 2008-09-08 14:28 wp-content
drwxr-xr-x 4 hemlock root 4096 2008-09-08 14:28 wp-content
drwxr-xr-x 9 hemlock root 4096 2008-09-10 19:34 plugins

Thank you to those who tried. No one should say I knew that, or I could have told you that. I figured out my issue was with file permissions and ownership. What was screwing my plugins up was, I was downloading and unzipping them on a Windows machine. Then I was transfering them to my LAMP server via usb thumb drive. So on a whem I downloaded, untared and placed the plugins in the pluging directory from the LAMP server, when I logged in to WordPress there they were. I was able to activate and use them. I found that the plugins need to have the owner and group as root for them to work and when I was copying them from thumb they had my login name as their owner and group.

Wow, I didn’t think that CHMOD would result in not able to see them. An error on activation I can imagine. Good that you sorted it and and thanks for sharing.