Time to give up and actually ask for help.
I'm fairly new to linux having been using apple products and then windows.

I'm having trouble with getting friends web pages to show online using /~username/ after the main page.
I chmodded the user directory (file:/home/user) to 755 and that allows me to access the web page propperly. however, after a while I get the 'forbidden' error and find that the permissions have gone back to default.
Is there a reason why the directory permissions would change back? I have tryd adding the user to a separate group and making the owner apache (saw it suggested in here somewhere), having root with full power over the directory, having the user in controle of the directory.
Variations of the user, root, and the web group in control
Anyways my setup, I'm using Mandrake V9.0, the router handles the dns stuff, the computer is a old HP Vectra. Other than the directory permisions everything has been working great.
Any suggestions would be great and I appologize if this has been answerd before, I found some simular articles when I did a search but nothing that worked.
Edited out the url so this would post.

what do you mean permissions are "default" ?? what is that ?? show ls -l
my permissions are all 755 both for home dir and for public_html
i just ssh to my internet service provider and theirs is the same 755

hi again i read a little about this cause i was currious
it seems mandrake has some security files in
/etc/security/msec/

appearently you can run at different msec levels ??? (mandrake security) = msec
try "man msec" i think it's a command like "msec x" for different levels ?????
looks like you want security level 3 ???? user umask 022

or possibly edit the files
perm.local i think is the one you want to edit
/home/* current 755

????????

also level.local has a setting
set_user_umask('xxx')
that might be a problem as well for new files added or new directories

and thanks to your question now i know i never want to use mandrake -- not a big fan of automatic security
settings

Heh, I was gonna use freebsd but that was too far above my head. I tryed editing the /home/* to 755 but it still switched back. I think ill try messing with the securety levels after work. I'm gonna put it on the lowest one and enable features I want one at a time using the securety utility in mandrake.
Any recomendations for a better distribution if something cant be worked out? And thanks for the suggestions. At least I have a few new areas to mess around in now. ^^

went to basic securety setting. I'll try enabling any features I want separately. So much for high securety being for running a server. Thanks again for suggesting messing with the securety.