How Easy Was It to Hack My Website ?

Hi,

I had a website running on my dedicated server. I am a linux noob and choose comfort over security. I gave "chmod 777" to my webroot and my website got hacked a few weeks ago. When I inquired a friend of mine(who uses linux and has experience, in managing servers) he said that giving write access to webroot is like inviting hackers. The one who hacked my site just deleted everything there and put a "This site was hacked.. blah... blah" in its place. I would like to know how he did it(maybe there is already a tutrial here)

Thank you!