How to Change the Permission of Files or Folders via the cPanel File Manager
Understanding File Permissions
In cPanel's File Manager, every file and directory has permissions that determine who can access and modify them. Here’s a simple way to understand these permissions:
- Read (r or 4): Lets you view the file's content.
- Write (w or 2): Lets you make changes to the file.
- Execute (x or 1): Lets you run the file as a program or access the directory.
Permissions are assigned to three groups:
- User: The file's owner.
- Group: Users who are in the same group as the file.
- World: All other users.
To find out a file or directory's permissions in cPanel's File Manager, look at the combination of these values. For example:
- If the file owner can read and write the file, the permission value is 6 (read 4 + write 2).
- If the group and all other users can only read the file, their permission values are 4 each.
Therefore, a file that the owner can read and write, but everyone else can only read, has a total permission value of 644.
Procedure
- Log into cPanel.
- Locate the file or folder in question.
- Right-click the file or folder.
- Select Change Permissions.
- Adjust the permissions from the prompted menu. It uses the full wording for the permissions, read, write, execute. For standard "644" that most files, the first section needs 'read, write', and the other two areas only need 'read'.
- Click Change Permissions once done.
