Fix Permissions After WordPress SVN Install

If you use WordPress for a lot of sites, installing it with SVN is really the way to go. I've been switching over all of my blogs to use SVN since it makes updating sooooo much easier. In fact, updating WordPress used to be my biggest gripe about the program, and now I don't even give it a second thought - it really makes it that easy.

However if you are on a shared host like I am, then the checked out files might not have the right permissions for your setup. My host is running PHPSuExe and that means that all executable files can only be writable by the user (644 for files and 755 for directories). But the checked out files and directories are all writable by the group (664 and 775). What to do?

I just SSH in, cd to the blog directory, and do a recursive chmod that removes the group write privilege from all files and folders. For example if your blog is in the typical cpanel root:

cd public_html
chmod -R g-w ./

Works every time.