Man, oh, man... what hours trying to figure this out... and Oasis, you hit the nail on the head!
GoDaddy did something, even though they are clueless!
If you go into your hosting manager control panel, and then click on Directory Management (under content), and then RECREATE the portal/0 directory with the appropriate read/write/web permissions, your stuff will work! It will then filter the correct permissions down through whatever wasn't working before! (For newbies (like me) -- if you ftp'd in, you would see those directories, you just can't touch the permissions from those directories through your ftp client. You have to use GoDaddy's Directory Manager to do this!
This will help you get rid of any 12/31/1600 file dates... because the directory permissions won't be wrong now...
Best,
Katherine