Summary: If you are trying to edit your theme template files from within the WordPress Dashboard (click “Appearance > Editor” to edit your theme files), but you see a message at the bottom of the editor that says “You need to make this file writable before you can save your changes”, then you’ll need to edit the file permissions for the WordPress theme that you are using. Similarly, if you’d like to use a custom permalink structure, but see a message saying “If your .htaccess file were writable, we could do this automatically, but it isn’t …” then watch this video to learn how to change those file permissions! NOTE: If your theme files and your .htaccess file are already editable from the WordPress Dashboard, then there is no reason to change the file permissions! Also, I recommend that you never change the file permissions to “777″ …
