Ubuntu – Correct permissions for /var/www and wordpress

Apache2

I have set up a LAMP server and I have access via SSH and to the "it works" page from a web browser from inside my network (via ip address) and from outside using dyndns.

We have some WordPress projects that sit in subdirectories in /var/www/wordpress1 /var/www/wordpress2, etc. I cannot access these sub directories from a browser in order to set up WP–or (I assume) to see the content on a browser. I get a 403 Forbidden error on my browser.

I assume that this is a permissions problem. Can you please tell me the proper settings for the permissions to:

  1. Allow the developers and me to read/write.
  2. to allow WP set up and do its thing
  3. Allow visitors to access the site(s) via the web.

I should also mention that the subfolder are actually simlinks to folder on another internal hdd–I don't think this will make a difference, but I thought I should disclose.

total 12
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root 4096 2012-07-12 10:55 .
drwxr-xr-x 13 root root 4096 2012-07-11 20:02 ..
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root   43 2012-07-11 20:45 admin_media ->     /root/django_src/django/contrib/admin/media
-rw-r--r--  1 root root  177 2012-07-11 17:50 index.html
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root   14 2012-07-11 20:42 media -> /hdd/web/media
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root   18 2012-07-12 10:55 wordpress -> /hdd/web/wordpress

Here is the result of using chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www

total 12
drwxr-xr-x  2 www-data www-data 4096 2012-07-12 10:55 .
drwxr-xr-x 13 root     root     4096 2012-07-11 20:02 ..
lrwxrwxrwx  1 www-data www-data   43 2012-07-11 20:45 admin_media -> /root/django_src/django/contrib/admin/media
-rw-r--r--  1 www-data www-data  177 2012-07-11 17:50 index.html
lrwxrwxrwx  1 www-data www-data   14 2012-07-11 20:42 media -> /hdd/web/media
lrwxrwxrwx  1 www-data www-data   18 2012-07-12 10:55 wordpress -> /hdd/web/wordpress

I am still unable to access via browser.

Best Answer

First, you should ensure that your username is included in www-data group. If not, you can add your username as www-data group

sudo adduser $USER www-data

After that, you should change the ownership of /var/www to your username

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

Next step, for general practice, you should change permission to 755 (rwxr-xr-x), not recommend changing permission to 777 for security reason

sudo chmod u=rwX,g=srX,o=rX -R /var/www

Related to specific permission for wordpress or laravel or another framework, then you can read the documentation respectively.

Hope it helps...

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