ok, i got it to this point:
Contrib Installer
1
Installing Contribution with install file: /home/blahblah/public_html/test1/admin/contributions/ImageCheck-1.2/install.xml
and now there is just a back button. was it installed? where is it? when i go back to where i can choose which contribution to install and i click on it, the remove button will not work which makes me think that it didn't finish installing. so far it hasn't given me any permission errors, but i tried changing them anyway and nothing different happened. i don't know of an easy way to change every file and folder in the main catalog folder, so i tried changing several to 755. i changed the main catalog folder, the admin folder, the contributions folder and every file and folder in the contributions folder. specifically, what files need to have permissions changed and what setting do i use? (755, 777, etc.?)
thanks, beth