The answer that would be most helpful would be to question: Truely, how interrelated or how irrelevent is .htaccess to WordPress? With regards to Permalinks, the .htaccess file is expected. But if we wanted to ignore 'customizing' our Permalinks, could the .htaccess file be ignored as totally irrelevant to the installation, at least until we get the blog installed and working?!
With regards to .htaccess and its necessity, WordPress documentation, in the context of updating Permalinks, assumes that the file exists, either by user insertion or by WordPress during installation.
If your installation of WordPress does not generate a .htaccess file or if it does not write the new rules onto your existing .htaccess file then there are a couple reasons that could be causing this.
I know that WordPress can create a file in my (sub)directory where I have my 'testblog' because I've used the wp-admin/setup-config.php. to create a config.php file. But I've never seen WordPress create the .htaccess file. It wasn't until I added that file that a directory would have .htaccess. I suspect that the Codex is wrong or out of date with regards to WordPress installing an .htaccess file.
The recommendation at this point is to update the file permissions to .htaccess- "upload and chmod 666, now generate your permalinks again, chmod .htaccess to 644 for security". A few other people have mentioned as well that you only want to give file permissions of 666 for a short period of time.
The implication is that the user would have to know when WordPress wants write access to .htaccess. This is a failure on the part of WordPress because, evidently, prudence dictates for that file should idle with only 644 access, and WordPress doesn't prompt the Administrator that it is attempting to write to .htaccess, so how would we know to temporarily apply chmod?
By the way, if you aren't seeing the .htaccess in any directories, you may need to find the menu item-"Show hidden files" which has to be a ubiquitous function in any FTP software; in as much as you'll find a door knob on both sides of a door; It's got to be there.
The .htaccess file exists when you go to your Concentric Gateway and use Files/Security/Protect Directory and mandate limits via the interface as to who can access that directory. It creates or updates the .htaccess file. And if you remove all limits to that directory, then Concentric follows through by deleting the .htaccess file from the directory. If you want to keep an .htaccess file, you use the Gateway interface to "padlock" the directory (creates .htaccess file) and then edit the .htaccess file manually via Concentric's file manager or software-FTP.
Regarding Concentric and CHMOD: After a phone conversation, I've gleaned that Concentric limits permissions. There is no work around for CHMOD at Concentric because that functionality has been "locked down". If WordPress truely is attempting to write to the .htaccess file, it's not succeeding because the file security isn't as leniant as 666 because its 660. With the Dashboard settings/Permalinks, 'saving' a new choice' of radio button isn't giving me any flags or text that would indicate that it is not able to the write to the .htaccess file, despite that the Codex says -
"If it can't, it will say something like 'You should update your .htaccess now' and print out the rules for you to copy and paste into the file (put them at the end)."
Which brings things full circle to the question: Truely, how interrelated or how irrelevent is .htaccess to WordPress?