Note: This article is for Linux/Unix environments only.

When you recompile PHP with phpSuExec enabled, or as CGI rather than apache, you'll get script-generated files owned by your FTP user. This is nice since it allows you to edit your files via FTP even if you use the autoinstaller and autoupdater, and because you no longer need to supply FTP info to WSN. Also, it's a more secure setup.

You'll probably want to ask your host about this procedure, and perhaps they'll take care of it for you. If you go it alone, the actual addition of suexec is easy enough with tools like Web Host Manager, but after it finishes you'll be left with file ownerships and permissions which are no longer appropriate. The result will be 403 forbidden errors everywhere. For each account on your server, login via SSH and go to its public_html directory. There, run these commands:

chown -R accountname:accountname *
(replace accountname with the applicable account name in the above)

find . -type d -exec chmod 755 {} \;

find . -type f -name '*.php*' -exec chmod 644 {} \;

These may take a while to run.

Finally, make sure you change the chmod value for directories from 777 to 755 at Admin -> Settings -> System in the admin panels of all installed copies of WSN scripts. Remove your FTP info since it's no longer needed.