777 file permission

[Anon]

Hi! I have a file that I want php to write to. I've found that I need to set the permission to 777. How can I minimize the security risk? If I use .htaccess to authenticate users, will the file be safe from outsiders and will PHP still be able to write to it?

Thanks!
Tommy

[brandonschnell]

php has the same permissions that apache has. chown the file over to apache so that only the user that apache runs as (default: nobody.nobody) can modify the file.