Discussion about permissions for web folders

This is a question that I have seen several discussions about, but am still not sure what the best solution is:

What is the best way to set up users and groups for web folders?

For the sake of this discussion: *I use Ubuntu and Apache *My web-folder is /var/www/mydomain.com *Apache default user is www-data and www-data group *my user is me, adam

Currently, I do this:

add my user to www-data group with:

sudo usermod -aG www-data $USER

and then I just add a symlink for www to my users home folder with:

ln -s /var/www  ~/

Now when I sftp into my users home-folder, I can just click through to www and I have enough permissions to edit files and such. If I create new files, I have to remember to run:

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

Doing that sets the new files to be owned by www-data. Everything works and the internet is happy.

I have been thinking of trying something a little different. What if I set www-data as the default group for adam.

sudo useradd adam -g www-data

And then set adam as the owner of /var/www and www-data as the group

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

In theory, Apache user www-data will still be able to do its thing, but adam will be the owner, and when I log in as adam I can create new files without having to worry about updating permissions all the time.

Anyone have a better way of handling users? Thoughts on my approach?