On computer filesystems, different files and directories have permissions that specify who and what can read, write, modify and access them. This is important because WordPress may need access to write to files in your wp-content directory to enable certain functions.

Permission Modes

  7       5     5
 user   group  world
 r+w+x  r+x    r+x
 4+2+1  4+0+1  4+0+1  = 755

The permission mode is computed by adding up the following values for the user, the file group, and for everyone else. The diagram shows how.

• Read 4 - Allowed to read files
• Write 2 - Allowed to write/modify files
• eXecute1 - Read/write/delete/modify/directory

  7       4      4
 user   group  world
 r+w+x    r      r
 4+2+1  4+0+0  4+0+0  = 744

Example Permission Modes

Permission Scheme for WordPress

All files should be owned by your user account on your web server, and should be writable by your username. Any file that needs write access from WordPress should be group-owned by the user account used by the webserver. For example, you may have a user account that lets you FTP files back and forth to your server, but your server itself may run using a separate user, in a separate usergroup. A user such as dhapache or nobody.

The file and folder permissions of wordpress should be the same for most users, depending on the type of installation you performed and the umask settings of your system environment at the time of install.