Checking file permissions in Joomla is rather easy, below I will show you how check and change file permissions in Joomla 1.5 and Joomla 1.6
Note that changing the file owner to Apache will let you edit files via the admin panel without changing file permissions to 777. You can do this by applying the “chown -R owner:user filename” command in the bash console. replace “owner:user” with the id of apache and the “filename” to the root folder of your website.
Joomla 1.5
Log in to your Joomla 1.5 admin panel then hover your mouse over the “Help” button which is located at the end of the main tool bar on the top of the page. To further buttons will appear, click on the system info button.
The information page will appear, click the directory permission link and directory permissions can be seens as writable or unwriteable.
Joomla 1.6
Log in to your Joomla 1.5 admin panel then hover your mouse over the site button which is located at the begin of the main menu bar on the top of the page. Click on the “system information” link which will open the System Information Site. Now click on the directory permission link and directory permissions can be seens as writable or unwriteable.
An easy way to change file permissions during the installation and the installation of modules and plug-ins
Before we begin you will need a little program called Putty a link to the download page for putty can be found in the at the bottom of this article. Once you have downloaded putty ( I recommend the windows installer) run the program and add the IP address of your server in the “Host Name (or IP address)” Field. As the name of the field suggests you can use either your URL or your servers IP address. Leave the port set to 22 since this is the SSH port used by most linux servers and click open. If this is the first time you have connected to this server Putty will prompt you about a Key, just click ok.
If everything is correct then a black box should appear also known as the “BASH” console which will ask your for a login and password. Here you must enter your Linux Username and password. If you are on a shared hosting subscription chances are you will not have administrator rights on the server. In this situation you can use the su – command. Simply type “su – ” without the apostrophes in the bash console you will then be prompted for your password. Once you have entered the password you will have administrative rights on the server.
Next you will need to navigate to the Joomla main folder. you can navigate in linux via the “cd /” command. For example: If your joomla installation is in the public_html folder and then the Joomla sub folder you can navigate there by typing “cd /public_html/joomla/ “. Once you are in your Joomla main folder copy paste the following commands in to the bash console, note that you can not use the ctrl+c and ctrl+v shortcut’s to copy paste in the console. Simply copy the text with ctrl+v or right mouse click/copy in windows and then a single right click in the bash console will paste the text.
Commands for Joomla 1.5 note that the folder needs to be changed to your folder name
Note you have to add “chmod -R 777 ” before each of the lines
administrator/backups/
administrator/components/
administrator/language/
administrator/language/en-GB/
administrator/modules/
administrator/templates/
components/
images/
images/banners/
images/stories/
language/
language/en-GB/
language/pdf_fonts/
media/
modules/
plugins/
plugins/content/
plugins/editors/
plugins/editors-xtd/
plugins/search/
plugins/system/
plugins/user/
plugins/xmlrpc/
templates/
/home/yourfoldername/public_html/cache/
/home/yourfoldername/public_html/administrator/cache/
/home/yourfoldername/public_html/logs/
/home/yourfoldername/public_html/tmp/
configuration.php
Commands for Joomla 1.6 note that the folder needs to be changed to your folder name
Note you have to add “chmod -R 777 ” before each of the lines
administrator/components
administrator/language
administrator/language/en-GB
administrator/language/overrides
administrator/modules
administrator/templates
components
images
images/banners
language
language/en-GB
language/overrides
media
modules
plugins
plugins/content
plugins/editors
plugins/editors-xtd
plugins/search
plugins/system
plugins/user
configuration.php
Once you have finished your installations you need to change the file permission back to 755. Simply replace the 777 with 755 in the text above and execute the command again.
Note that leaving the file permission set to 777 will make your site vulnerable to hacker attacks.
Save the above scripts in a text file and use them each time you want to install or un-install a module or plug-in.