WordPress.org

1. ossian1898
   Member
   Posted 8 months ago #

   Hello - I'm a newbie in the forums here, but I appreciate any help I can get.

   I recently created a new wordpress site and was trying to get the file uploads in the media section to work. I looked around here on the forum and found some advice, since I was getting an error saying wordpress was unable to create the directory.

   I found a post saying to chmod the upload directory to 777, and then change it again to 775. That worked.

   The problem is now that all the directories created by wordpress (for instance /uploads/2009/03 etc are all automatically set to 777 and I cannot change them, even manually.

   Are these deeply nested directories OK at 777? Is this normal for the uploads directories?

2. burgwinkel
   Member
   Posted 6 months ago #

   This is a little late, but I am researching the same issue. So far, it seems 777 (world writable) is not an unusual setting for the wp_content folder. Also, I am told by my web host that having a folder writable by the server (775) is the same as having it writable by the world, since the world can write to these folders via scripts. I'm not sure I trust that advice.

   I haven't bothered much with all this since installing WordPress years ago. but I just changed web hosts and ran into the problem of not-writable directories again. A quick look back at the settings on my former host, and I was surprised to find 777 on a few folders. Never had a security issue there.

   A perusal of comments on this forum suggests that setting 777 on some directories is how this issue is often handled. Personally, I prefer 775 (user and group writable only), but in order for that to work, the files and folders must belong to the server group (sometimes named 'nobody' or some variation of 'apache'). They don't belong to the server group by default, and changing the group has to be done by the admin of the server. That's tedious for them to do. Hence, the frequency that 777 is used. That it is tedious to do is also why admins tend to say that group-writable by the server is the same as world-writable. It is not the same, but how much difference it makes seems hotly debated.

3. ossian1898
   Member
   Posted 3 months ago #

   I'm still looking for a solution, or an answer if anyone is out there listening...

Reply

You must log in to post.