An aside on the whole permissions situation: I have a dozen or more installs of wp, on various hosts. In NONE of them do I have to have permissions set other than all files at 644, all folders at 755 in order to work: this includes plugins AND THEMES (excepting ONLY the cache folder for WeatherIcon, which has to be world writeable).
Point: several installs are on “php as cgi” servers; several are on “php as apache module” servers – they ALL WORK EXACTLY THE SAME WAY. I’ve not had to tweak, nor have I had to ask my hosts to change anything at all. This also (and against “current wisdom”) includes setting permalinks (with .htaccess at 777 ONLY UNTIL WRITTEN TO BY WP, then reset to 644 immediately thereafter) and having “write new pages” work just fine.
YMMV.