"This page is not writable"

Working locally from my sites folder on a mac. The same set of files gives me a different error message when trying login to /panel using MAMP:

As far as I can tell the permissions are fine, but I tried loading a fresh version of kirby into my sites folder and got this message:

The only thing that seems to be working is a fresh version of kirby with MAMP, but I’d prefer not to go back and redo all the formatting changes I’ve made to the site and start fresh.

@texnixe any thoughts? You’ve already been very helpful!

I was able to find this:

but I have no idea how to execute anything discussed as possible solutions in this thread.

Recently I cloned my Kirby installation from my privat git repo to work on it with another Mac. The issues 1, 2 and 4 (of your last screenshot) appeared to me too because these folders (accounts, thumbs, avatars) are excluded via my .gitignore. So double check if they do exists – otherwise just recreate them.

Concerning the folder permissions keep in mind that Apache needs writing permissions and if the Apache username differs from your username you need to assign writing permissions to the group, too.

You could try 775 instead of 755 for folders and 664 instead of 644 for files. But I’m not sure if this leads to a security issue on shared hosting?!

Where is .gitignore? And those directories mentioned (accounts, thumbs, avatars) exist already.

What do you mean - differing usernames? Assign writing permissions to what group?

Under ‘Get info’ there’s nowhere to enter 775 etc. Just dropdown menus. I’m have very little experience with Terminal, so if I go that route literally need to follow instructions step by step.

If you are not working with git, don’t mind about .gitignore. If the folders exists everything’s fine.

As long as you’re on your local machine, there shouldn’t be a problem with the Apache user either.

Under “Get Info” you have 3 dropdowns. At least the first one should be “Read & write” (don’t know the exactly wording in English because my system runs in German). If that is not enough for the mentioned folders, try to set the second one to “Read & write”, too.

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Well, hot damn. That worked! Changing all the dropdowns to Read & Write fixed it! I also tried variations… Looks like changing everyone to “Read & Write” was the one that made a difference. Leaving staff at Read only doesn’t seem to matter.

Thanks Flo!

Alright. But keep in mind that granting “Read & Write” access to all of the three (= 777) shouldn’t be an option on your live server!

I’ll definitely keep that in mind! Thank you!

Have a look at this page for user/group permissions settings and what the numbers/letters mean: http://www.user-archiv.de/chmod.html

In terminal, you can go to the parent folder and check permissions by typing ls -la

E.g., for the /site/accounts folder, it should give you a 755 which looks like this in terminal: drwxr-xr-x

Edit: I don’t really think that fiddling with the rights is the right solution. I mean, all the three of us are on a Mac and my rights on the folders are definitely 755 and 644 on the files and everything works perfectly. So the solution should be different although currently I have no idea.

2nd Edit: If the fresh Kirby install works, use that and delete the following folders:

  • site
  • assets
  • content

and replace with the folders from the version where you made your changes. That way you will not loose the changes you made.

MAMP also has a setting to run Apache and MySQL with your current user’s permissions. This means that as long as you can write files in the Finder, MAMP can too, so you don’t have to modify permissions.
I’m not sure whether the free version has that setting, the Pro version has it.