WordPress folder ownership issues

Question

Hi I set up wordpress on a VPS and I'm running into two problems:

1. Either WordPress asks for ftp details in order to update plugins or delete them

or

1. Through FTP I cannot delete files as I get a permission denied error.

Problem 1 is solved by running: sudo chown -R www-data public_html

Problem 2 is solved by running: sudo chown -R myusername public_html

Solving one problem creates the other apparently. I want to be able to login with my user to ftp and modify anything, while I also want wordpress to be able to update plugins and such things. Am I doing something wrong?

Answer 1

you can run something like

sudo chown -R myusername:www-data public_html

it will solve both the problems together

Answer 2

chown www-data:www-data public_html/ -R

On Ubuntu and Debian apache & php run as the www-data user and www-data group so any files that php needs to be able to write to have to be owned by the user and group.

Answer 3

Try setting the sticky bit on your permissions