Permissions for installing themes and files in general?

Question

www.net2ftp.com shows my permissions to be

rwxr-xr-x

for the top level directory which I aptly named wordpress ( test site ).

This would be for ( user | group | other ) and ( read | write | execute ) so that I have write permissions if I am " user ".

I am of course logged into wordpress with the only account that was setup at the beginning of the installation process.

Because wordpress would not install unless I copy pasted the config file over manually...it seems it differentiates between manual editing of files and software copying/editing of files.

Not to sure why?

When I do an install I get the error:

Unable to create directory /home/domain/public_html/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/03. Is its parent directory writable by the server?

Answer 1

This is more of a system configuration question, but still ...

On the server, everything is locked down based on users and user permissions. You are a user. Your FTP account is a user. Your root account is a user. WordPress itself is a user.

So while you as a user might have write permissions for the WordPress directories (which is why you can manually upload files), WordPress might not have write permissions and won't be able to add/edit its own files.

There is more information about file permissions located in the Codex, but I highly recommend you ask a system administrator (someone with plenty of Linux experience) to check to see which users have write permission and which user WordPress is running as.

Answer 2

net2tp.com does not consider your word press administrative credentials...how could it...it considers you the user because you logged into net2ftp.com. How could it know that you are logged in to the administrative side of Wordpress...when Wordpress attempts the install is is part of the "other" and does not have write access.. Solution...do it manually...install the folder directly to the themes folder under wp-content...then activate it...from the administrative side under appearance->themes->install