Cloning GS sites to new domains

[dblewett]

I notice that, while it's easy enough to copy over an entire GS site into a new httpdocs directory, chmod to 777 and go into the admin to change the base URL under Settings, I still get an error message when I update anything in the CMS Settings page.

Error: Unable to continue: Unable to write config file. CHMOD 777 the folders /data, /backups and their sub-folders and retry

The funny thing is, I have already CHMOD'd everything to 777 (-R) and while I get the error, it doesn't appear to be valid as the changes I put in DO write to the site.

I can easily enough just ingore the error, but it will freak out my end users when they go to update their sites. So, my question is, how do I suppress this error message?

I've cloned a site a few times, and have figured out a pretty simple method that works perfectly.
1) I unzip the file locally and upload the complete set via ftp.
2) Run the install script and set up the site and any default settings.
3) Delete theme and plugins directories.
3) Upload via ftp the theme and plugin directories from the previous site.
4) Enable the plugins.

That's it.