Changing Security Permissions

When we add files to our host computer we can also set certain permissions for each of the files and folders. Some of the files, in our arcade, we don’t want to be accessible to all users. For example some of the files store our arcade database information, and we don’t want everyone to be able to have access to that file. If you are not familiar with permissions do not worry, we will walk you through this part step-by-step. If this concept does not make sense you may review ‘linux file permissions’ from Google to grasp a better understanding. But, for now, we are going to hold your hand as we walk through changing these file permissions, it’s actually very simple. We will be changing the file permissions from our host control panel file manager.

First we need to be logged in to our HostGator control panel. Once you are logged in we are going to click on the File Manager button from the Files group as shown in Figure 1-12. This step has already been shown a couple times before. The ‘File Manager Directory Selection’ popup will appear as shown in Figure 1-18. Make sure that the ‘Web Root (public_html/www)’ radio button is selected and click the ‘OK’ button. You should now see your file manager directory in front of you similar to Figure 3-7.

The files in this directory will reflect the same files that you dragged into the Filezilla application. The files and folders that we will be changing permissions to are as follows:

-          cache                                    [folder]

-          cache/config.php             [file]

-          includes/dbinfo.php       [file]

-          includes/config.php        [file]

The way that we change permissions in the File Manager is to right click the specified file and go to ‘Change Permissions’ as shown in Figure 3-9.

Figure 3-9 File Manager change file permissions.

Once we click on permissions a new dialog will popup as shown in figure 3-10.

Figure 3-10 Change file permissions pop-up.

We want to change each of these files to read [7] [5] [0]. More detail about Linux file permissions can be found online. This type of permission we are setting on the file is called ‘chmod 750’. Again, if you are uncertain about file permissions, it’s not going to affect your knowledge of the arcade creation process. So, follow through changing all the files listed above to reflect [7] [5] [0]. Once again the files we want change permissions will be the ‘cache’ folder and the ‘cache/config.php’, ‘includes/dbinfo.php’, and ‘includes/config.php’ files. ].  Alright, after we have changed those file permissions we can move on to creating our arcade database.