If you're a Blogger user, as I am, you might have noticed recently that you were suddenly unable to post/modify entries to your blog, create new blogs, etc. For me, every publishing attempt was greeted with this message:

550 Permission denied on server. You are restricted to your account./2006/12/post_name.htm

A little Googling turned up this discussion, which has the correct fix buried in some of the later comments. Here's what you need to do to get up & running again:

1) Login to Blogger
2) Go to the Settings Tab
3) Go to the Publishing sub-tab
4) The third field down should be FTP Path. It used to be blank, but now probably contains a "/"
5) Change it to "." (without the quotes)
6) Click the Save Settings button
7) Note that the FTP Path field now reads "./" rather than the "." you typed in. This is OK.
7) Republish the blog

Voila! Problem solved. Blogger is claiming they didn't change anything, but that FTP Path field would not give up its slash. If I cleared the field out & then clicked "Save Settings," the slash came back. Slash, as those who work with path names know, indicates the root of the path. When the field was blank, Blogger would publish to the root of the FTP Server's specified path (first field on that screen). With the slash there, it was attempting to publish to the root of the FTP server itself, which most of us peons don't have permission to use. "./" means the root of the current parent, which is the same as no path at all in this case, so it solves the problem.

When Blogger wakes up and realize they did change something, and then removes the code that automatically puts a slash at the end of the FTP Path, you may experience the probelm again (when your FTP Path suddenly turns to "." instead of "./"). If that happens, reset it to blank, and you should be good to go again.

Happy blogging...