The folder in question is a subfolder under apache/htdocs.
i run chmod 666 ./* -R and chgrp/chown username ./* -R on a folder with several subfolders. everything looks allright. then a php script generates an error and says that permission is denied to create a folder within this tree. i'm not really sure what i do but suddenly i can't ls nor edit any of the files. everything looks fine when i check the tree out logged in as root.
so. the problem is that all the files have 666 permissions and are owned by my default user and my default group, but i still don't have permission to do anything with the files.
idea anyone...?

Directories need to have the execute bit set or people can't enter them
so it should be 777 if you want it to be world writable

also I'm a bit confused if you want to change the attributes of
a directory you don't do from within the directory you are only
changing the files in the directory.