File upload and permissions

I have a form which uploads a file to my server. The files that are uploaded will be .doc files and will need to be able to be downloaded from a web page. My script works locally - I have tested it well files upload etc., but I am moving it to a commercial web server and am not sure what permissions should be set like for this directory. I have tried my script and gotten the files to upload but when the script tries to move them to the directory where I want to keep them I get a permission denied error. I have played with it - changing permissions and the only one that works is chmod 777 - not sure if this is good or not - pretty new to unix administration stuff. What do you all suggest? Thanks, Charles