title: Magento CSS/JS not loading after upgrade to 1.8.1
body: <p>I just upgraded my Magento site from 1.6 to 1.8.1. After the update the website is unable to load CSS and JS. I checked the error log and it says this:</p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>[Tue Apr 22 16:40:30.616082 2014] [core:crit] [pid 27847:tid 140041728800512] (13)Permission denied: [client 60.240.167.112:59507] AH00529: /home/strictly/public_html/js/.htaccess pcfg_openfile: unable to check htaccess file, ensure it is readable and that '/home/strictly/public_html/js/' is executable,</p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>I followed many people's advice and did these:</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>Clear cache in var/cache folder</li>
  <li>web/unsecure/base_url and web/secure/base_url configurations are correct (they both point to the corrent URL)</li>
  <li>dev/js/merge_files and dev/css/merge_css_files are both 0</li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>Even after this the site loads very slowly, and when it loads it's not no CSS and JS. I check the behind-workings using Chrome's Inspect Elements button and I can see the CSS and JS files failing to load, each giving 404 not found error.</p>
  
  <p>My guess is it has something to do with setting the correct permission for the JS and CSS folders/files. Does anyone know how I could do this?</p>
  
  <p>Thank you</p>