[ILUG] Permissions question

[ollie at eillo.org]

On my ubuntu server file and folders i created as well as stuff I installed
belonged to the ftp user. 

As a result i had to be generous with permissions to get my webapps to
work.

I changed the owner and group for these files to www-data which allowed me
to completely
remove permissions for 'other' and 'group'.

Looks like this:

--rw------- 1 www-data www-data  7925 2009-07-20 21:04 index.php

Question 1: Does index.php need execute permissions? It seems to work. . . 

I noted that hidden files are still owned by root:

-rw-r--r--  1 root     root      730 2009-07-20 21:04 .htaccess

Question 2: Should I leave it like this or change it to www-data?

Same for most folders in document root:

drwxr-x---  5 eillo    psaserv  1,0K 2009-07-20 21:04 ../

Question 3: Should I change their owner/group to www-data?

Thanks,

Ollie