I have a php application that I'm having rewritten. The old appliction created directories and files - but only with the 777 chmod on the directory it had to access. We are changing this but I am curious about how this works.

If the application creates a file is it the "owner" of the file in terms of chmod. I do want the ability of change, rename, etc.. files and I've used some gallery scripts in the past that would not allow a user to do that even via ftp.

What needs to go in the application in terms of granting it ownership for a more secure chmod setting. And in making this change what then is the status of the application (owner or user)

Thank you

PHP usually runs under the "nobody" username so "nobody" will be the file "owner"

And

http://php.net/manual/en/function.chown.php

Though you may have to make PHP run as "root" to get the elevated privileges

well I'm not sure about the whole superuser thing. I dont' want to have to set that up everytime I load the application.

With "nobody" as the file owner - just for comparison, if I upload an image via ftp - who is the owner?

I guess what I'm asking is how do I get the application to create and edit the files using 755 rather than 777 chmod

The "owner" of FTP uploaded files is the user id of the control panel primary login.

If your hosting is using the vsftp daemon you can set the ownership and permissions in vsftpd.conf.

I'm sorry, I guess I'm not being clear.