Permission Modes

  7       7     7
 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       7      4
 user   group  world
 r+w+x    r      r
 4+2+1  4+0+0  4+0+0  = 644

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.

For core WordPress files, all should be writable only by your user account. However, if you utilize mod_rewrite Permalinks or other .htaccess features you should make sure that WordPress can also write to your /.htaccess file.
If you want to use the built-in theme editor, all files need to be group writable. Try using it before modifying file permissions, it should work.

Some plugins require the /wp-content/ folder be made writeable, but in such cases they will let you know during installation. In some cases, this may require assigning 755 permissions or higher (e.g. 777 on some hosts). The same is true for /wp-content/cache/ and maybe /wp-content/uploads/

Additional directories under /wp-content/ should be documented by whatever plugin / theme requires them. Permissions will vary.

/
|- index.php
|- wp-admin
|   `- wp-admin.css
|- wp-blog-header.php
|- wp-comments-post.php
|- wp-commentsrss2.php
|- wp-config.php
|- wp-content
|   |- cache
|   |- plugins
|   |- themes
|   `- uploads
|- wp-cron.php
|- wp-includes
`- xmlrpc.php