I’ve been using my local development environment with apache, php, mysql and always had some issues with file permissions, but never gave it enough attention to fix it as I was always doing something else. Tired of this, wanting to do some backups with WordPress, plugins, etc I’ve found the following commands that fixed my machine, hope this can help you.
Here we go:
Open httpd.conf:
sudo vim /etc/apache2/httpd.conf
Go and find the following line:
User _www Group _www
Now change it to:
User your-username Group staff
Restart apache:
sudo apachectl restart
You can also update your folder ownership with the
chown -R your-username:staff foldername
Remember to replace your-username with your real username in my case is miguel. My parents did a great job with my name, aye!
Have a nice day.
Further reading
http://serverfault.com/questions/106713/changing-ownership-of-a-folder-using-terminal
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8035939/write-privileges-localhost-mac-osx
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2001881/correct-owner-group-permissions-for-apache-2-site-files-folders-under-mac-os-x
