Do I have to keep mt output directories chmod 777? Since mt runs as nobody, which is not me, I get errors when mt tries to archive (weekly and monthly) because those files need to be created, unless i have the output directories at 777. This seems unsafe to me. Any suggestions or code tweaks to handle this?

thanks,
jesse

If your host has cgiwrap or suexec installed, you can CHMOD your blog directories to 755. My host runs suexec and basically I don't have to worry about CHMODing my blog directories at all, I just create them and leave them at the default and everything works fine. So you should ask you host about using cgiwrap or suexec.