Problem with fopen()

I am trying to complete an email application which will send messages to lists. Problem is, I am trying to write the messages out so that they will be available to a server application which actually sends the messages and does all the dirty work but I am getting the error that I cannot create the file in the directory. I have tried chmod and chown on the directory but nothing is working for me. I have even gone so far as to make the owner of the directory apache and the group of the directory apache but no luck. I am asking this question here because I thought someone out there might be able to give me some insight on how they solved a problem like this on their servers.... Help! Thanks! Ben