How To make sure any file or folder created in /var/www/html gets automatically owned by www-data
To make sure any file or folder you create in /var/www/html gets automatically owned by www-data you can use inotify , it's like cron but monitors folders/files for changes in attributes, file creations, modifications and much more. First install it with: $ sudo apt-get install incron Allow root to use incron by opening /etc/incron.allow with: $ sudo vim /etc/incron.allow and add root to the file, then save and exit. Edit your incrontab with: $ sudo incrontab -u root -e and add the following line to it: /var/www/html IN_CREATE /bin/chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html/ save and exit. Now as soon as a file is created in the /var/www/html directory it will automatically set ownership to www-data:www-data. Explanation of the line in incrontab: /var/www/html is the directory that will be monitored. IN_CREATE will watch for created files. It's the file change mask. /bin/chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html / is the command/action to execute.