For the record, setting those permissions on a shared server can cause issues if the hosting provider has modified the settings to deny existence of files which are group writeable. This is not usually an issue as the segregation and partitioning on most shared servers means that the webserver will be accessing the files under the same username as the one you log in with. I also find it’s usually better to use shorthand such as u+w or g-w for recursively altering permissions, accidentally setting all directories to 644 will make them inaccessible to all but the root user as directories must be executable.