Permalink: WP won’t create .htaccess

Hello:
I need help with a permalink-.htaccess problem. I know there are many existing threads on .htaccess, but can’t find one that matches my needs. I am a new WP user and have tried to work this out for several days. Using the plugin filosofo in the WP theme logofriendly, as per install instructions, I created a custom permalink: /blog/%year%/%monthnum%/%day%/%postname%/ and was directed to update the htaccess, but no suggestion appeared in box e to paste to the file… the file was empty, nothing in it, I did try creating a new file with this content suggested at filosofo site:

‘#BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /blog/+
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /blog/index.php [L]
</IfModule
#END’

This seemed to screw things up even more (couldn’t access blog or WP account, so I deleted the content using cPanel and tried again to get WP to create a new one, with the same result. I can go to my blog, but cannot access any pages or categories, nor can I view the site or pages through the WP dashboard.. Links work. But for everything else I get a 404 error message.. I’ve tried deleting htaccess, recreating a new empty one and re-updating permalinks, etc…but still get 404. I have tried changing the htaccess attributes to everything from 664 to 777. FYI:My server is a small orange: Operating system Linux Service Status Click to View Kernel version 2.6.9-42.0.3.ELsmp Machine Type x86_64 Apache version 1.3.37 (Unix) PERL version 5.8.7 Path to PERL /usr/bin/perl Path to sendmail /usr/sbin/sendmail Installed Perl Modules Click to View PHP version 4.4.4 MySQL version 5.0.27-standard cPanel Build 10.9.0-RELEASE 94 Theme cPanel X v2.6.0 Documentation Click to View cPanel Pro 1.0 (RC36)

Any suggestions? Your help would be deeply appreciated.

Thanks.