sorry thinking while posting...

you should not have to use 777 for it to work. 666 should be a viable secure chmod. you can use any file extension you want for the tex/flat files. inc is common. I have used .fun for functions, .pwd for MySQL login info, etc etc etc

You have to modify your .htaccess file however to may these files treated as PHP files. Once you do that you should beable to store sensative data in them.

Well I changed them to .inc, and moved them out of the main directory to a hidden on, I'm now changing the chmod to 666 to see if it works. TY for all the help sintax, it was not as hard as I had first thought

you do not need a hidden directory, it would just be more secure to store them below the pulic accesable directory.


ie...

/home/your_dir/public_html

or

/vars/your_dir/htdocs

or

/vars/your_dir/www


each of the "your_dir" in the examples above will not be reachable by a web browser. FTP yes, but not a web browser. This keep people from harvesting your IP list