Quote by Tony: The open_basedir is a restriction based on the user. In the case you do an FTP, you are using your user ID and are allowed to do that fine. However, Geeklog runs under what ever user ID the webserver your host is using is set to. For example, on my RedHat box, my Apache process runs as the user apache. The open_basedir is probably not allowed to let the web server user write files to the webtree like that but your ID can. Hope that makes sense.
Thanks Tony, I've forwared your comments to my ISP. Happy new year!
Regards
Alex.