Wordpress Files Issue

I've used WordPress a lot in the past and never had any issues, but recently started using a VPS where I had to setup everything on the server myself. I'm noticing with my installation of WordPress that I'm having all sorts of problems with installing new themes, updating Wordpress, uploading images, etc. I'm able to resolve the issues for the most part. Like say for the uploading images issue, I just had to create an uploads folder and set the permissions to 777. But is this safe? I've never had to do it with other webhosts, infact, other web hosts wouldn't even allow 777 for security reasons. Would it possibly have to do with ownerships on my files/folders? Right now they are currently set to root:root. Not sure what else I should set them to. I'm using centos.

 

You should change the ownership of the whole wordpress directory to the web server user instead of using the root user
cd /var/www/
sudo chown www-data:www-data * -R
sudo usermod -a -G www-data username
of course use your web server username in place of username
i don't need to change any permissions after this
check out these tutorials related to centos and WordPress installation

https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-wordpress-with-nginx-on-centos-6--2
https://www.digitalocean.com/commun...-linux-nginx-mysql-php-lemp-stack-on-centos-6
https://www.digitalocean.com/commun...linux-apache-mysql-php-lamp-stack-on-centos-6

search tutorials section you should find more.

 

Thanks a lot for the information. I think we're definitely on the right track here when getting into chowning and ownerships. The only issue is that www-data does not exist. When I trying the usermod or chowning anything to those ownerships, then I get a message saying invalid group "www-data". Any suggestions on what I should do from here? I wasn't able to find anything in the links provided, and not having much luck researching myself.

 

It appears CentOS uses the user apache instead of www-data
so try
cd /var/www/
sudo chown apache:apache * -R
sudo usermod -a -G apache username

or if you are using nginx
cd /var/www/
sudo chown nginx:nginx * -R
sudo usermod -a -G nginx username

 

Works great Thanks!