Permissions not working

Quote from icon58

I am having the same issue Dedofull is having. I tried the in game console commands, setplayergroup PLAYERNAME GROUP, I get Player PLAYERNAME not found.

Instead of "PLAYERNAME", you have to put an actual playername there. So if you want to add yourself to the group, you have to put your name there.
Btw, I've moved your post into a separate topic. It's also better to upload permission files instead of posting the content, since when posting the content, the indenting (which is important) gets lost. To upload a file, press the "More Options" button at the bottom (when writing a reply), then you can go to "Attachments" at the bottom and upload the particular permission files.
It appears that your permission file is erroneous. The part about creative does not work this way ("creative:true", followed by a "-*"). Here are more information about permission files Permission system

try setplayergroup Group playername and Group with capital

Admin permissions are the main permissions mostly.

I'm wondering about the admin permissions.

Your admin permission file:
creative:
allow:true
- *
deny:

Remove deny, because you don't have specificated what you want to deny.

If your permission files work properly don't change anything.

Quote from icon58

I am pretty sure this game hates me

No, definitely not. Asked the game, it told me it loves every player, no exceptions

Quote from Jjustmee22

try setplayergroup Group playername and Group with capital

That would not work unfortunately: To use the command correctly, you have to type setplayergroup playername group, but of course you have to replace "playername" with the actual name of the player, and "group" with the actual name of the particular group (for example "admin").

Quote from icon58

@ Red Does Admins start with creative powers?

Admins (according to the server.properties) are only allowed to use all commands. Everything else is handled by the permissions.

Quote from icon58

Creative refuses to be well creative....

Thanks for uploading the permission files, there are indeed some errors: As @Deirdre said, the part about creative is wrong, in the "admin" file as well as in the default.permissions. It should look like this:

creative:
    allow:
    - default
    - freecrafting

creative:
    allow:
    - *

There is also something else you need to take into account: The admin group permissions need to be named "admin.permissions", instead of just "admin.txt". Basically it should always be groupname.permissions, so for example "moderator.permissions", or "guest.permissions" etc. It's also important that all group permissions are in the "groups" subfolder.

Another hint to find out if permissions are syntactically correct: When starting the server, there will be some information about the permission files in the server log. If something went wrong, you will see an exception (or several exceptions) in the server console/log, otherwise it should output something like "INFO: Default server permissions loaded successfully!" and "INFO: Group "admin" permissions loaded successfully!"

I've attached the fixed permission files for you btw Put them into your "permissions" folder, start the server and type "setplayergroup icon58 admin" to become a member of the admin group.

Quote from icon58

I actually was reading up on YAML and I think part of my problem is I automatically use tab (which YAML does not like) instead of white spaces. I removed the file hoping the game would rebuild a new one (it did not) so now I guess I just need to find a different text editor than notepad++, or retrain my muscle memory.

I was trained in more traditional programming languages where spaces dont matter and now spaces are crucial so this was the biggest challenge in learning YAML, Ruby, and Python. There is an option to convert Tab character to spaces:

Go to Settings --> Preferences --> Tab settings. Checkmark "Replace by space" and set the number of spaces. Since you are editing YAML files, its probably best to set 2

Unless you have something truly better in mind, Notepad++ is really one of the best editors I've seen for Windows.

Darmok and Jalad on the ocean.

Quote from icon58

I am trying to make it so admins can fly but not others. I am also trying to make another group, add people in them to give them more control than others.

Flymode is not considered as a command. A command is only something you can type into console, so flymode is handled in the "general" permissions, as you can see in the default.permissions file (just replace the "fly: false" with a "fly: true").
There are also some other problems with your permission files: The indenting in the admin.permissions is wrong, the "fly: true" does not belong into the commands section, but you also have to use correct intending for the "general" part.
In the default.permissions file, the indenting of the "deny" part of creative permissions is also wrong (it's also recommendable to use lower case letters only).

Quote from icon58

It's also important that all group permissions are in the "groups" subfolder

This only applies to groups you create. The default.permissions belongs into the main "permissions" folder (since it's not exactly a group), but all group permissions (like the admin.permissions, or all other groups you create) belong into the "groups" subfolder.