biag

Hi Lejovit, to you and anyone with such a problem in the great Servage hosting: by default .htaccess files are deactivated for security reasons.
To put .htaccess file into action, log in to the control panel, click on Web server and then on ‘Set .htaccess file’. Confirm the activation and wait some hours, then click around your site and see the rewritten links begin to work.

Unregistered user, you are great. ??
As you imagined, your info has been helpful for “another who is searching here later”. Actually *much* later…

I published my question as *not* a support question, so no surprise that nobody answered. ??
I’ve been brave enough to solve the problem by myself: the php configuration on the Internet installation was missing a statement about the temp directory, which php uses for uploads. I made a virtual host in the Apache configuration and added a ‘php_admin_value’ directive, for that site, to set a valid temp dir. With an ftp client I made it writable. Then I restarted Apache, just to be sure about the directive becoming active.
Immediately phpinfo showed the updated value for the temp directory.
I logged in to Wp and, guess what, files uploaded with the built-in uploader does not become ghosts anymore. Photopress does not complain anymore about the temp directory being not writable.

Hope this helps someone else solve such a problem without losing as much time as I did!