drupal

Poormanscron settings are found at the very bottom of the site information page. (Administer > Site configuration > Site information)

What are drupal's recommended file permissions?

According to the drupal documentation:

File Permissions in a Nutshell

/default on 755
/default/files including all subfolders and files on 744 (or 755)
/default/themes including all subfolders and files on 755
/default/modules including all subfolders and files on 755
/default/settings.php and /default/default.settings.php on 444