How do I make a directory for all users to access?

[ishkabibble]

I want to have a place to store all our household files. I thought I'd done this by creating a new user and making all the permissions on its documents folder "create and delete files" but now I get an error message that says the home directory must be private to that user.
- What am I doing wrong here?
- How do I set up this "all users" directory for common files?

[adamlau]

Here is an easy way:

1. Create a directory at /
2. Set 777 permissions on the directory

[albinootje]

I want to have a place to store all our household files. I thought I'd done this by creating a new user and making all the permissions on its documents folder "create and delete files" but now I get an error message that says the home directory must be private to that user.

From which application came that error ?

Likes someone else already posted, you can do this for example :

sudo mkdir /data
sudo chmod 1777 /data

I wonder whether you want all users to be able to create, edit and delete all the files and directories inside that main directory (/data in the example).
Because chmod 777 and chmod 1777 is not enough for that goal.
You might need to put all users in one group and use chmod g+s on the /data directory so that group permissions are inherited, and even then the default umask creates files with 644 permissions, which is not practical for this...