Well mine are on defualt 644 and it works. Ive downloaded some tagboards and they say to put the tags file on 777 and a counter I got said to put the count and logs on 777 but I didnt, and they still work fine.
But wouldnt 777 allow a script on another server write to the files? So I just said you dont need to CHMOD assuming that there default is 644.
My .htaccess isnt CHMODing to anything but the default 644, and it works too. Maybe my server is diferent?