Have a look on the owner and group of the file.

Compare the "hello.php" owner and group with a file created by apache.
Try for example to upload a file (ie. image) using Joomla.
Perhaps this will help you identify which owner and group is used by apaches.

The first digit of a chmod correspond to the owner
The second to the group
The third is for eveybody.

So you have to try 755;
or 775
or 777

Hi Edwin - I think I understand it now.

I need to do a

chown apache:users /destination folder

or something like that so apache and php have permissions but everybody doesnt.

Havent quite got this working yet but will have another go tonight.

I wanted to say your support has been the best I have experienced. My queries are not caused your product but you have still helped tremendously.

Fingers crossed I will have 100s of slaves soon!

Will

Try to identify the owner and group used by your apache.

Perhaps this is "apache:users" but this must be checked.
I repeat, try upload a file (like images) to identify the owner and group name associated to this uploaded file.
You probably need a SSH connection to see the correct owner name and group name.
Some FTP tools may not display the correct information.
It is always better to use a SSH or Telnet connection to have a unix prompt and see the information returned by the system.

Hi Edwin - I have come back to this after a break but still having issues.
I can only get "Unix Symbolic links : allowed" on my server but only when I set public_html to 777.
I followed your advice and uploaded an image to identify owners and groups and get:

-rw-r--r-- 1 demo10m demo10m 81810 Aug 2 10:25 hair1.jpg

demo10m being the user name for the account

If I do the same for /public_html/ I get:

drwxr-xr-x 16 demo9my nobody 4096 Jul 20 00:08 /home/demo9my/public_html/

The hello.php (which works fine with public_html set to 777):

-rw-r--r-- 1 demo10m demo10m 8400 Aug 2 10:48 /home/demo10m/public_html/hello.php

I have tried chown demo10m:demo10m /home/demo10m/public_html

but this does not resolve the permissions issue. Again I need to have public_html set to 777 to get JMS to work.

Any help would be appreciated getting a bit desperate now!

How bad is setting public_html to 777? surely if the folder was to be compromised access to rrot would be required first?

Normally, this is not advised to put 777 on public_html as this give the permission to everybody that are working on your server.

Based the info that you have provided, you can see that the ower are different and also the group.

In one case you have:
owner / group = demo10m / demo10m

An with /public_html/
owner / group = demo9my / nobody

The problem is there.

If at least you have the same group, this will avoid you to provide a 777 (owner, group, everybody). So you could have (775) or (770).

With your chown, you give a different path than the previous.
You have asked to change the owner of the directory demo10m and not the one demo9m

I suppose that demo9m and demo10m are two different account in your hosting provider.

If as I suppose you are using different hosting account, you should either use a unique account or change the ower or at least the group to have the permission.

With your result, I see 2 different owners with 2 different group and also 2 different path.

So start to use a unique path and NOT
/home/demo9my/public_html/
/home/demo10m/public_html

Once you will have the same path, decide at least in which group you want the user have the permission and NOT the group like the one you have for the moment
demo10m
nobody

After that you could use a chmod 775
and if you want to use a chmod 755
you also have to use the same owner and NOT
demo10m
demo9my

I think that in your case, the expected result would be either
Unique path /home/demo10m/public_html
With owner demo10m
and group demo10m

if you want also use the path /home/demo9my/public_html/
you should change its owner to
With owner demo10m
and group demo10m

Here put 10 for the path 9