That would be strange since I never got any problems with this on normal shared hosts. Too bad not all servers are configured the same way. I leave to answer sbillard though who is the primary author of the setup stuff anyway.
The permission settings recommended by Zenphoto are the ones that generally will work and provide the best site security. The document you reference does note that these may not work on all servers.
Particularly if your server is configured using groups and different user IDs for the web application and the FTP application setting the security so that only the owner can change the file will cause issues with FTP uploaded files.
The "Proper" solution is for the server to be configured so that you, the site owner, have a single user id and it is used for all your actions. All other solutions open the site for various degrees of hacking.
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Particularly if your server is configured using groups and different user IDs for the web application and the FTP application setting the security so that only the owner can change the file will cause issues with FTP uploaded files.
The "Proper" solution is for the server to be configured so that you, the site owner, have a single user id and it is used for all your actions. All other solutions open the site for various degrees of hacking.