How to Change File Permission for Wordpress Using FTP Client

April 13, 2009 by Pablo Palatnik

I thought I’d put this up since I had a problem figuring this out (IM NOT VERY TECHNICAL) then maybe it’ll be useful to some of you. Most themes you download and then upload to your server, are not writeable so you can make changes to the themes, etc. I was trying to figure this out for a while since I made quite a few changes to the style sheet of this particular theme. SO, here it is:

In the screenshot below, look at the last column – that shows the permissions. It looks a bit confusing, but for now just note the sequence of letters.

Initial permissions

Right-click ‘index.php’ and select ‘File Permissions’
A popup screen will appear.

Look at the number 666. When you follow these steps, for the most part, you will see 644. Just go ahead and make a quick change to 666 and click apply and then should do it.