Editing WordPress Permissions in LAMP – Ubuntu 11.10

I’m hosting a local version of my wordpress theme on Ubuntu 11.10. However, LAMP is installed in a directory that requires sudo privileges. When I try to add images or any outside content to my theme, it fails because it cannot create a folder/write to a folder.

How do I edit the permissions to allow WordPress the access it needs?

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  1. I think that setting all to 777 is not the most secure option.

    Basically, my favourite is to change the wordpress to the webserver’s owner. Being:

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

    So that the webserver is responsible for handling changes.

    Also, you can change the rights to 755 for the whole /var/www branch

    sudo chmod -R -c 755 /var/www/ 
    

    Finally, allow your wp-content/ folder in 775 ( so that you can edit files from the WordPress backend without having to upload files via FTP. ( Not necessarily a best practice but useful from time to time ) via

    sudo chmod -R -c 775 /var/www/WORDPRESS/wp-contents/
    

    And you will have a reasonable setup with uploads, editing from backend and a minimum level of security.