One Fine Day -SharePoint Permissions Gone

All of a Sudden, My SharePoint (Site Owner) Permissions were gone and the SharePoint Site is READ Only

Issue:

SharePoint site that is normally accessible with the defined permissions exhibits Read Only behavior, even though if you are a Site Owner.

Also you would see something like this….. Where is my settings option?

Also you wouldn’t see your owner settings when you go to your site settings

REASON/SOLUTION:

Okay, there could be a number of reasons for this. But a common one may be that you are performing scheduled STSADM Site Collection Backups (particularly those of you in the SMB space on a budget that can’t use 3rd party tools or have access to Full SQL and Database Maintenance Plans. And, since the delivery of SP2 for WSS 3.0/MOSS 2007, STSADM Backups now set the site collection to ‘Read Only’ during the operation. As such, backups that were running in the early evening that previously were not disruptive; all of a sudden give off weird results. So, with that… The fix?

You could move the backup job to a window that is not going to interfere with business (simple and ensures the site collection is protected/read only during the backup)

You could modify your STSADM Backup job to use the new switch provided which is –NoSiteLock (reference: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc263441.aspx)