The ultimate fix for permissions

[ckosloff]

When I was installing Zencart the permissions issue haunted me.
Setting numeric chmod to 777 is a security hazard and frowned upon, however some Zen Cart manuals sold publicly state that it should be used or 755.
Now, 755 means that group has read and execute permissions but cannot write, the ZC installer complained that certain files and folders were not writable.
So, finally the solution dawned on me, I remembered that in my olden days (2007), I used group www-data.
The following instructions are valid only for a LAMP (Linux, Apache, Mysql, PHP) server using Debian or a derivative like Ubuntu, I don't know about nginx or Windows.
You must use a command line, I don't know Cpanel or similar stuff.
Now, with that out of the way:
Under group www-data will work the PHP, mysql and Linux scripts that need to write during installation, so you need to change ownership of the whole site to your_user:www-data by placing your terminal above the directory were you unzipped your ZC files, which is /var/www/html and issue command from root or another user with superuser privileges (sudo user):
chown -R my_user:www-data my-site.com.
So we have changed ownership, now change permissions:
chmod -R 775 mysite.com.
After you have executed these instructions the installer will proceed.
Enjoy.