I ran the following commands to set up ACL on the /var/www folder in my Ubuntu 12.04 Server:

sudo usermod -g www-data abe
sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www
sudo chmod -R 775 /var/www

I downloaded Wordpress using wget in my /var/www folder and unzipped the downloaded file:

cd /var/www
wget http://wordpress.org/latest.zip
mv latest.zip wordpress.zip
unzip wordpress.zip

I created a new database and user in mysql and attempted to run the setup process through the web interface.

When I enter the configuration info in wordpress I run into the following error message: Sorry, but I can't write the wp-config.php file.

When I run ls -la, I see that the files are owned by my user abe, but they are part of the group www-data.

Would I have to run the chmod command every time I copy new files to /var/www?

sudo chmod -R 775 /var/www