2. Create a data folder
Elgg needs a special folder to store uploaded files including profile icons and photos. You will need to create this directory.
We recommend that this folder be called "data". For security reasons, this folder must be stored outside of your document root. For example, if Elgg is installed in:
/home/www/elgg/
You might want to create the data folder in:
/home/www/data
Alternately, if Elgg is installed in:
/home/username/public_html/
then you may want to create it in:
/home/username/data/
Once this folder has been created, you'll need to make sure the web server Elgg is running on has permission to write to and create directories in it. This shouldn't be a problem on Windows-based servers, but if your server runs Linux or a UNIX variant, you'll need to type something like this:
chgrp www-data /home/www/data/
chmod 775 /home/www/data/
If you use a graphical FTP client to upload files, you can usually set permissions by right clicking on the folder and selecting 'properties' or 'Get Info'.
NOTE: Setting your data directory to 777 will work, but it is insecure and is not recommended. If you are unsure how to correctly set permissions, contact your host for more information. Again, you need to make sure your web server has full permissions to the directory.
