I have installed WordPress on a local LAMP installation. All I want is to edit the theme files locally on an editor like VS Code where I can open the theme folder and start editing on the go.

But I can't access them, as the access is denied to the whole wordpress directory. I can edit the files in the theme editor. But I want to do this in an external code editor. How can I achieve this. What permissions do I have to change.

I used these permissions during installation.

sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/wordpress

sudo find /var/www/wordpress/ -type d -exec chmod 750 {} \;
sudo find /var/www/wordpress/ -type f -exec chmod 640 {} \;

Elementary OS 5.1 based on Ubuntu 18.04

I have installed WordPress on a local LAMP installation. All I want is to edit the theme files locally on an editor like VS Code where I can open the theme folder and start editing on the go.

But I can't access them, as the access is denied to the whole wordpress directory. I can edit the files in the theme editor. But I want to do this in an external code editor. How can I achieve this. What permissions do I have to change.

I used these permissions during installation.

sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/wordpress

sudo find /var/www/wordpress/ -type d -exec chmod 750 {} \;
sudo find /var/www/wordpress/ -type f -exec chmod 640 {} \;

Elementary OS 5.1 based on Ubuntu 18.04

• theme-development
• permissions
• local-installation

• 1 Welcome to StackExchange, GunJack. This is a common problem. By default, web sites are usually configured not to allow editing by users in the web directory. This is a security feature intended to limit a malicious visitor's ability to modify the site contents. There are probably numerous answers on how to set this up either here or on the web in general. Can you please consider adding references to other questions or sites that address your issue and indicating why they aren't the solution you need? – Ted Stresen-Reuter Commented May 19, 2020 at 8:49

1 Answer 1

You have to add yourself to group www-data. sudo usermod -a -G www-data yourUserName Don't forget the -a, which appends the new group to your existing groups. Otherwise you loose all other groups.