I'm trying to upload my wordpress theme to my directory and the instructions say that the .htaccess file needs to be writable by the server as the theme is being set up. How do I do this. Further into the instructions it says I have to set the permissions to 777 for some of the uploaded files.

How do I do this? Thanks.

Our servers run PHP as suPHP which does not like permissions of 777 and  777 is unnecessary. Files including .htaccess should be set to 644 and folders to 755.

You will see three groups of three letters, or equivalently, three numbers.

The three letter groups are permissions for the owner (a.k.a. user), group, and world (a.k.a. other). You are the owner; don't worry about the distinction between group and world (just always give them the same permissions, no higher than the owner's).

One number is the equivalent of a group of three letters for one of the parties. Just add up the numbers for the desired permissions for that party.
r = 4  (permission to read this file or directory)
w = 2  (permission to write to this file or directory)
x = 1  (execute permission for certain kinds of files, such as Perl, and for directories to work)
0 = no access of any kind

So,
644 = rw-r--r--  = a file readable by anyone, and writable by the owner (you). 6 = 4+2 (r+w), 4 = (r).
755 = rwxr-xr-x = a directory readable and usable by anyone, and writable by the owner (you) 7 = 4+2+1 (r+w+x), 5 = 4+1 (r+x).

Generally, you don't give "write" permission to anyone but yourself (and your scripts are acting in your name). All files you will be dealing with, except for Perl scripts in a cgi-bin directory, are 644 (modifiable by you) or 444 (read-only, to prevent accidental modification by your scripts). Perl scripts are 755, like directories. Never give 666 or 777 permissions -- suPHP will shut down your access to that file or directory.

If you have cPanel, click on a file or directory name and a list of actions will show on the right. One of them is "change permissions". Click on that. Tick/untick boxes to change permissions. Do not type anything into the number boxes. I presume that LPCP has something similar.

Some FTP clients have trouble setting permissions on some server configurations. You can try it, but don't be terribly surprised if you find you can't change permissions.

'user' would of course be 'rwx'. Presumably you're talking about the permissions on a directory (the default when you create a directory are usually 755, so you wouldn't have to do anything).