permissions wrong on new accounts. or PHP permissions problem.

I had cPanel installed on my old VPS and I just upgraded to better equipment. I installed cPanel fresh and didn't copy my VPS or anything like that. On my old server I could create a domain account and install Wordpress just fine. However on my new server whenever I install wordpress from the site software in cPanel (I don't have or need fantastico, and this is how I always did it on my other server) I get a prompt in the wordpress admin that I need to enter my ftp credentials when doing updates or installing plugins, like php can't write anything itself. If I change the permissions on the public_html directory then it has no problem writing as usual. This is very annoying ! What can I do to get back the behavior I expect? Thanks.

 

output:
Available handlers: suphp dso cgi none
DEFAULT PHP: 5
PHP4 SAPI: none
PHP5 SAPI: dso
SUEXEC: enabled
RUID2: not installed

My old VPS is already deleted so I can't run the command on that.
What should I change so that php runs the right permissions, and why is there a way to run php where the permissions are wrong? and how is whatever you suggest going to effect performance and how is it going to effect security? I am more concerned with performance than account security as I generally manage the cPanel end of configuring things for my clients, none of them would even know what to do with direct access to their cPanel account. and even at the Worpress/CMS level, I'm the one who installs plugins or other site software.
Thanks. -Brad

 

Thanks for the help, I changed it from DSO to suphp and now it works as expected.