A quick look and assessment (champagne is chilling!)…

first thing of note is that your wp-content permissions are set to 0777… why is this?  that is a security risk and generally a no-no…  Have you set it to that for a particular reason?  Its not the wp default and greatly discouraged by wp…

also think its the heart of the problem…

because sp-resources is being created in wp-content, its attempted to be created with the same permissions, but fails and instead gets created with the 0755 permissions… believe the ownership then gets set wrong because the user does not have permission at 0755 to affect the directory…

the script then checks the directory, detects that the ownership is not as needed and attempts to correct it… but since the web user the install is running as does not have permission, it fails.. hence the directory failure notice you saw during the install…  Its actually created, but not really usable by simple press…

I suspect since simple press will write and read files from there later, the sp-resources and subdirs will need to have similar permissions in order to work…

but first, back to original question…  do you know why wp-content is set to 0777?  did you explicitly do that? or perhaps another (and insecure) plugin do it?

Hard to say now. I may have done it when I was messing around with the issue.

I didnt try resetting it since didnt know where it came from… would be interesting to try an install with a 0755 (more secure too) setting…  but dont know if any impact to your site…

No impact. Should everything under wp-content also be 755? I can change it real quick.

the folders should all be 0755 normally…  depending on php/apache could be 0775… but since wp-admin and wp-includes are 0755, I would say yes to 0755

Done.

hmmm… the web user that simple press gets assigned as it executing cannot write to wp-content unless the world (other) permission is writable… quite odd…  yet when it creates a dir, it gets 0755…

do you know how php is configured on your server?

suspect you are using an apache module and have an odd umask…  wonder if we can change your umask as we run…

Hum… now you’re getting beyond me.

me too… trying a few things…

that’s the problem…  when we recognize the directory was created wrong, we try to fix and get this (normally suppressed)

Warning: chgrp(): Operation not permitted in /problem-with-post-edit-buttonome/midtenmaker/public_html/blog/wp-content/plugins/simple-press/sp-startup/install/sp-install.php on line 825

Warning: chown(): Operation not permitted in /problem-with-post-edit-buttonome/midtenmaker/public_html/blog/wp-content/plugins/simple-press/sp-startup/install/sp-install.php on line 826

so do need to know how php and apache are configured to work… seems a very limited web user is in force for scripts… and the required 0777 bothers me too…

might try to brute force the directories and see if working…

Sent you a pdf with my apache and php info. Maybe that will help.

seems to be running php as apache module which should be fine… still dont understand the 0777 permissions on wp-content as your server does require them… without them, directories below wp-content are not writable…

so what group is the apache user in?  it needs to be in the same group as your user (wont print name here)…

well, past time for me to start the New Years Eve fun…

will get back to this…

Agreed. Have fun!

so what group is the apache user in? 

Don’t know.