[Brandon Sheley]

Originally Posted by lierduh

chmod and chown are Unix commands.

I did not realise many amdins are newbies when comes to system admin.

Basically you need to change the permission of the directories so that the php script can write files (sitemaps) to them. I understand some of your providers probably do not even provide shell access to the server, only some sort of user control panel for admin purpose. I am afraid I can not explain how to use these control panels as I have not seen one. Users of such ISP control panel may be able to provide more information. People who do not know what to do should provide information such as what sort of control panel do you use, what is in there, what have you tried.

I will try to explain in general:

When I refer to the base directory, I refer to the forum base directory. Some of you might have set up the forums this way:

http://www.mysite.com/forums/

That means http://www.mysite.com/index.html will be in the root directory of the domain. The base directory for the vB will be ./forums under the web root.

If your forums are set up as http://forums.mysite.com/
Then the base vB directory will be the root directory for the domain (forums.mysite.com)

This hack needs to write to
1) The base vB directory (where you find showthread.php file)
2) The archive directoy (where you find archive.css file)

So you need to make these two directories writable for the php script, OR world writable.

A little info for the Unix chomd command.

1: executable
2: writable
4: readable

1+4 = 5 means readable and executable. Directories should be at least 1, 5 for a directory means visitor can read (list) directory contents, unless a index file is found.

php files only need to be readable: 4

If we need to write to the directory, then the permission needs to be:
1+4+2 = 7

There are three permission for each file/directory. 1) User, 2) Group, 3) World/anyone

User means the Unix logged in user, or the user the script runs as (typically apache or nobody is used by web servers).

Group means the user group the user belongs to. Typically the apache server runs the script as 'apache' or 'nobody' group.

World means the permission for everyone. They can be any user who logs into the web server. Naturally it includes the user that the php scripts runs as.

If you do a
#chmod 777 a_directory
The first 7 means the user can read, execute, write to a_directory.
The second 7 means the user group can read, execute, write to a_directory.
The third 7 means anyone can do these tasks.

So a 777 permission will sure let scripts write stuff to the directory, but with less security.

chown is another Unix command to change the owership of a file/directory.

#chown myusername.mygroupname a_directory
will change the directory's owner to 'myusername', and make the directory belongs to 'mygroupname' group.

All above refers to Unix/Linux usage, Windows probably uses some mouse clicks, but the essence should be the same regarding user/group and permission.

Now that I have spent time and effort to write, I hope the people who ask questions can also take the time and effort to write questions.

i wouldn't go as far as to say im a newbie...
i know how to chmod,
as you notice my question is where is the file if i'm chmoding...

you said something about shell access ? whats that mean, i'm my own hosting reseller, i have full access to my host.
If you woul be so kind to tell me where this file is,, thats all i ask
btw its vb 3.5.0 rc2
the newest one as of this post

thank you,
-LM