How To Set Up CHMOD Permissions For Your WordPress Website

Posted by Madhavi on May 18, 2011 in WordPress 101 | 0 comments

In the previous article, we went over the basics of CHMOD permissions and what they mean. As a quick recap, let me just summarize: CHMOD permissions allow you to configure the kind of access to your server files that you can grant to what groups of people.

While setting up and working on WordPress websites, many a times, we may encounter an error message that basically tells us that we can’t perform a particular operation because a file on our server isn’t ‘writeable’. Today, let us see how we can use our knowledge of CHMOD permissions to rectify such error messages and gain access to certain files on the server.

When Do We Need to Set Up / Modify CHMOD Permissions?

This situation might often occur when we first set up and install WordPress on our server. And we may first encounter this situation while we try to upload a picture into our WordPress website’s blog post or page.

Alternatively, this situation might occur while we set up the Permalink structure of our website.

Either way, certain files are not set up to be ‘writeable’ right at the outset.

That is when we are required to set up / modify the CHMOD permissions of that particular folder or file.

In case of the image upload situation, we might need to change access permissions for a folder called “wp-content” and in case of the Permalink set up, we might need to change the permissions for the “.htaccess” file.

However, here is a point to note in this case: Some hosting providers will automatically set up the right permissions right at the outset when you install WordPress on your server.

Where Can We Change The CHMOD Permissions?

You can change the CHMOD Permissions using either of the 2 simple ways given below:

If you have cPanel access to your server files, you can directly go to the ‘File Manager’ section and select the file or folder and modify the permission over there, or,
You can use your FTP program and navigate to that file or folder and use the ‘Change Permissions’ option in the program to modify the permissions.

How To Change the CHMOD Permissions

The video below will show you how simple and easy it is to modify the CHMOD permissions on your server.

In this video you will see the kind of error you might encounter, and how you can change the permission either in the cPanel or using a FTP program.

In Conclusion…

While setting up CHMOD permissions is an important aspect of configuring the kind of access granted to the files and folders on your website’s server, it is not very difficult to set up those permissions. With the right amount of information and the right tools, it is a very straightforward process that can be implemented with a minimum of fuss.

Was this article useful for you? Did it help you or guide you to set up the CHMOD permissions for the files and folders on your WordPress install? Did you encounter any issues or difficulties while doing so? Did I miss out on something?

Please do share your thoughts and experiences in the comments section below.