Working on a new client's dev site, which is a wordpress install on a Plesk box. I have SSH root access, and FTP access through a separate account.

What I've done so far

Initially I couldn't make any changes to any files at all. The permissions on all the template files looked a little screwy (644), so I figured change them to allow group, and add myself to the group:

• CHMOD Recursive on the theme folder to set everything to 664
• Quickly realised I'd broken it, set the folders to 755, kept files as 664
• Ownership on all files is a mixture of root:root and 500:500 (there is no user nor group with the ID of 500 on the server).
• Added myself to the group 'root' so I could modify the files too

The Problem

This worked OK, in terms of being able to edit the existing files, so I began working. However, I can't upload to the directory, even having run CHOWN -R root:root templatefolder/ and being in the root group.

I feel like I must be missing something obvious, and it's doing my head in.

Questions:

Files in the install owned by 500 with group 500 - I've looked in /etc/group and /etc/passwd and there is no user nor group with this ID. Is that left over from another developer's setup or the previous server (they moved recently)?

Is being in the 'root' group enough, or do I need to own the theme folder as 'myftpuser' in order to upload and create new files?

Like I say, I have edit access, so I got myself this far. I'm now questioning what to do next!