How do I give WordPress write access to my .htaccess file?

I upgraded from WP 2.6 to 2.7 on Friday, and since then my pretty permalinks don’t work. I did the upgrade through Fantastico (I’m hosted on MidPhase).

From what I’ve read in the support docs and on this forum, WordPress needs to have access to my .htaccess file in order to update my permalinks, right? What I want to know is, How do I give WP that permission?

I can view my .htaccess file through File Manager on cPanel. Here is how my .htaccess file reads now:

.htaccess
ASCII text
——————————————————————————–

# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>

# END WordPress

Also on File Manager I see that the permission is set for 644 access. I have read here that I should change that to 666. But I don’t know how to do that.

How do I change that access? Is there some easy way through the cPanel on midPhase?

Thanks for your help. My site has been down for 2 1/2 days now.