I was wondering about the best way to implement and give permissions to webroot, also known as the root directory of your web server. I’m familiar with Ubuntu’s structure, so I’ll use Ubuntu’s default webroot directory, which is /var/www.

Based on numerous documents and discussions I’ve read online, the proper way to give permissions to webroot is to (1 ) add a user to the www-data group, (2) change webroot’s ownership to www-data, (3) give all members of www-data group read and right access.

ulysses = user
webroot = /var/www
www-data = user and group for Apache

Here are the commands to run from the Terminal.

Step 1

Add new user to the www-data group.

$ sudo adduser ulysses www-data

Or

Add existing user to the www-data group.

$ sudo usermod -a -G www-data ulysses

Step 2

Make www-data the group owner of /www/data

$ sudo chown -R ulysses:www-data /var/www

Step 3

Give members of www-data permissions.

$ sudo chmod -R g+rw /var/www

That’s it. Pretty straightforward.