I will attempt to explain my problem in detail since I am unsure as to what elements are relevant.

Recently a friend and I decided to start a site, and since neither of us have the technical know-how to host this site off of one of our own computers, we decided the minimal fee that a hosting site by the name of "Godaddy" was offering was acceptable for the present. So we get our account setup, buy a domain name (www.runefatty.com), and decide to fool around a bit. We quickly learned that in order to get stuff onto our site, we need an FTP client, so we downloaded one by the name of "CoffeeCup". This program was easy enough to get accustomed to, so after learning the basics of it we spent a little time learning some HTML/CSS. Up until this point everything had gone fine and dandy, and although there were a few misunderstandings along the way, they were easily resolved by on-site help guides.

So we discuss the prospect of making a forum and we agree that it would be fun to have one on our site. After searching for a bit, I found a forum application named phpBB3 and it seemed like it was pretty reasonable, so I download it, and then upload it onto our site. The tutorial it comes with showed me how to get the installation page up from it, and so I got there and go to the requirements page. Everything is in order except for at the bottom, it says I need assign some permissions to certain files so that the forum can access them later when it is running. Easy enough right?

I had seen a permissions option earlier on the FTP client, so I go over and start to fiddle. The error message "Access violation" appears a bunch, and after I have had my fair share of it, I dismissed it as something wrong with that particular program. I downloaded another FTP client called "WS_FTP" and I got it in working order, found the permissions section. Was able to right click and get to the permissions menu, which made me happy, so I set the permission values like the phpBB3 website told me to on all the right things, and go back to test the reqs again. Doesn't work, same problem. Go back and check the permissions and they have reset themselves. I repeat this process 3 times, doing something slightly different every time with no success.

Getting kind of frustrated now, I look for some tutorials on how to assign permissions on my "WS_FTP" client. Pretty much all said the same thing, and I didn't see what I was doing wrong until I found the line: "While there are permission settings on Windows servers, they are usually only set at the server level and are not comparable with the built in security features of a Unix file system - thus individual file permissions can not be set by the owner via FTP on a Windows server."

So this is where I am lost... I don't know how to give my files permissions so that I can get my forum. Preferably would like to stay away from alternatives like "Try a different forum application" because I suspect that I will experience the same problems... I will give any information needed to solve the problem, thank you much in advance, and apologies for my style of writing which is tedious.

OK. Do you know that you are on a Windows server?

That was my assumption.. I am using a windows computer, and when I first registered for the service I had to choose between a Linux or Windows server. So yes, I am fairly sure I am.

Sorry, no idea how permissions works on IIS.

I wondered because a couple of years ago a friend of mine had a problem with WS_FTP. Exactly what you describes happened to her. She changed the permissions and they where changed back again. When I FTPed to her account I could change them just fine. At last I got her to change FTP client and all was well.

I recall we googled and found other people with the same problem, but I never found what the problem was.

Cuteftp.pro is by far the best ftp client http://www.cuteftp.com/downloads/ no more probs

kind regards
coolvibes

Why?