Problems with chmod

I am currently trying to chmod some of my files in order to put an rss aggregator on my site but every time i try to give a file attributes different from the default they automatically return to default attributes within seconds. can someone tell me what is going wrong and how to fix it. i would really appreciate it. thank you in advance for any help you may give me.

Maybe your FTP server doesn't allow CHMOD via FTP (or requires some certain bits set, see https://www.smartftp.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=7537). If you also have access via SSH, have you tried CHMOD from there?