The servers are setup to use suPHP as PHP5-handler and the files and folders are always 'owned' by the user. Folders get in principle always the value '755" and files always max. '644'. In combination with suPHP your site has the best possible setings. With suPHP the permissions '777' are not allowed and will lead to 500-server error. Specific configuration files such as Joomla's configuration.php are advised to secure more and set to '444'
