Using ProFTP and Wordpress Together in /var/www/

I’ve set up a Wordpress installation. I’d like to be able to SFTP into the wp-content directory in Wordpress to create a custom theme by saving files directly to the server in the theme directory.

I followed this SFTP using ProFTPd tutorial and modified a few other things in /etc/proftpd/modules.conf:

• I set DefaultRoot to /var/www/
• As I had issues creating files (despite being able to connect and see the structure of /var/www/, I also created a directory configuration directive:

  <Directory /var/www/>
    <Limit STOR CWD MKD RMD DELE XRMD XMKD>
      AllowAll
    </Limit>
  </Directory>

I still had issues creating files or this point and assumed it was a result of some unix permissions issues. I went to the var/www/ directory and entered the following two commands:

• sudo chown -R username:username *
• sudo chmod -R 0755 *

At this point, the .htaccess file is still owned by www-data but everything else is owned by my unix username (not root). At this point, I could finally SFTP into my server and post files. Terrific!

…Except… When I use Wordpress at this point, I have trouble installing themes or plugins due, I assume, to (yet again) a unix a permissions issue. The error message I get is Unpacking the package… Could not create directory..

I’m no unix expert but it seems like in order to SFTP files into /var/www/ I need to own the files, but that prevents Wordpress from installing items through its web interface.

Can anyone help me configure things in such a way that things will work whether I manually SFTP or try to install a theme or plugin from Wordpress?

Thank you so much for reading. I hope this explanation was helpful.