WWW user has no permissions in user site, how to change?

Question

Hi everyone,
we have a backoffice running over a mySQL database & phpmyAdmin on one of our websites. When I like to create a project over the website backoffice the user should create a folder and upload the images into it.
The website uses Apache OWNER: www and GROUP: staff to create the files/folder however they are only set with permissions (644).
It seem that the folder is linked to my username and no one else has access.
How can I fix this problem?
TIA
Dave

Answer 1

I'd recommend considering Drupal or another web content management system (CMS). It might initially seem like severe overkill, but it makes managing file uploads and documents and such rather easier. (If you want pointers to what a CMS like Drupal looks like running on a Mac OS X Server box, start with the information at http://64.223.189.234/node/82 and web pages available from there. Or contact me off-line.)
To change ownerships manually (if I understand the question), use Terminal.app and the chown and chmod commands. "sudo chown x:w file" (and often "sudo chown root:www file), and "sudo chmod u=rw" file or such to change the file protection.
You do want to be very careful around directories open to the web server, particularly if the site is accessible on the Internet. If you're not careful, you'll find all sorts of stuff uploaded into such directories. And near the worst case, you might find your whole website re-uploaded and repurposed by somebody else.
What you have to do to get this to work in your particular context and your web server -- beyond chmod and chown commands -- involves details of what software and HTML you're using to run your "backoffice" site.