Joomla Permissions for installations

If you have SSH, Shell access the following commands should be able to be run from the command line to reset all your files and directories back to the server defaults of 755 and 644.

Change directory in to the top directory (" / ") of your Joomla! installation, then run these;

find . -type f -exec chmod 644 {} \;
find . -type d -exec chmod 755 {} \;

If you only have FTP access, this can be a very time consuming job, however, unless you changed more directories during the installation that was requested, you should only need to reset about 10 directories and the configuration.php file.

Keep in mind that to install any extensions or templates after the actual Joomla! installation you may need to elevate the default permissions again on the appropriate directories just for the installation period, you may then demote them again after the add-on is installed.

If you decide to use "cache" the cache directory will need to be "Writable" to the Web-Server user to allow it to write its temporary files.

Once you have completed the installation, next thing to do is read Ron Liskey's "Joomla! Admins Security Checklist". I am sure you will find much of the security information that you will need in this post and the Security Forum.

Joomla! Admins Security Checklist
http://forum.joomla.org/index.php/topic,81058.0.html