Obvious your deleting more than the install folder alone. Does the blog reappear after you ftp (upload) the files again?
I suggest next time you delete only the contents of the install folder, not the folder itself.

What is the proper permission setting for this file?

All file permissions are standard (644 for file and 755 for folders) on my host.
During installation the file conf/_basic_config.php nedds editing and therefore temporarily a higher permission (666). The installer will prompt you if there is any problem with that. After successfull installation the installer will set the permission back to 644.

Have you tried uploading all the files *without* the install folder? If you did upload the files again you must check the file conf/_basic_config.php. There on line 46 onwards it reads:

$db_config = array(
	'user'          => 'demouser',     // your MySQL username
	'password'      => 'demopass',     // ...and password
	'name'          => 'b2evolution',  // the name of the database
	'host'          => 'localhost',    // MySQL Server (typically 'localhost')
);

and on line 89:

$baseurl = 'http://localhost/b2evolution/blogs/';

and on line 96:

$admin_email = 'postmaster@localhost';

You must change these settings with yours, especial the db_config and the baseurl.
If these are not set, it explains why your blog doesn't show.

Good luck.

And a few lines later there be something like "config_is_done" that should be a 1 when the above stuff is done instead of the 0 it starts out as.

I have gotten it fixed. I thougth somewhere I read to lower the permissions of the basic config file so I had it set at 400 and that's what wasn't working. Thanks for your help.

Well done

You are referring to this part in the [url=http://manual.b2evolution.net/Directory_and_file_permissions]manual[/url]

 /blogs/conf/_basic_config.php

This file is critical, because it includes your database password! It needs to be writable by the webserver during installation, if you do not want to manually edit the file. It should have the most restrictive permissions as possible: 600 would be the best, if the owner of the file is the "PHP user" (where PHP gets executed as). If you are not sure, try it in the following order: 600, 660 and (if necessary) 666. After installation the file does not needs to be writable, so you could also use 400, 440 or (if necessary) 444.

The critical part with it is not the "write" part, but the "read" part: you want to protect your database credentials as much as possible.