Originally Posted by zagi

This is actually the same on all web hosts. By default the web server runs as user "nobody" with as few privileges as possible. Unix is strict on permissions so when you login to FTP as "myUsername" you can not modify anyone else's files except your own.

There are a few work arounds. If you're using CGI then you can configure suexec which allows individual VirtualHosts to execute as "myUsername" or any other user that you configure it for.

Another is to change the umask settings for Apache or your script, thereby allowing group read/write on new files and making sure that you're part of nobody's group.

Another is login to the server with root to do file management although this is quite dangerous, yet will allow you to make any changes you want without any server modifications.