What's the deal with the permissions?

[WebTrooper]

Hi all, I'm just curious about this. When I install Joomla, for instance, I never have to set the permissions. I have a couple of accounts with other hosting companies plus a dedicated, and I always have to chmod folders and file when installing any script, but on my BlueHost account I never have to chmod anyting. It is convienent, admittedly, but I'm curious about A) How they do it, and B) Is it a security concern.

Thanks

BlueHost Rocks!

~ WebTrooper :cool: ~

[siguie]

It's probably the way that you are installing joomla or the file that you are using. If you expand a tar file directly on your website then the permissions are already set. If you expand the installation file on your home computer then move them over to your account you'll need to do a lot of chmoding.

[WebTrooper]

Thanks, that makes sense. I just wish my other hosting providers made things this easy. I maintain a few different providers for testing and comparison and with the others I have to go through and chmod each file/directory as needed before I can complete the install. Anyway, thanks for clueing me in. :)

[lazynitwit]

Your other web hosts probably have PHP running as the web server's username rather than yours. Which would be the reason for having to change permissions.

Many hosts are starting to run PHP as your username rather than the web server's, so any file you have permission to view/edit PHP also has permission to do so. It is in no way a security concern, its actually an improvement.

[siguie]

If you have SSH access you can manually expand tarballs :) it's usually a command like "tar -xvf FILE.tar" ... it's just the way I've always done it BUT yeah it is nice that BH offers the "expand archive" option from CPanel :D