Ubuntu – Change file permission from -rwxrwxr-x to drwxrwxr-x

Use php's chmod function.

<?php
chmod("/somedir/somefile", 0777);
?>

also you can also use shell_exec function

<?php
echo shell_exec("chmod 777 /somedir/somefile");
?>

This is what groups are for.

You can add the ftp user to the apache group, and vice-versa. Or, even better, you could add them to a third group that you create specifically for this purpose.

e.g.

# groupadd mygroup
# useradd -G mygroup ftp
# useradd -G mygroup apache
# chown -R :mygroup /var/www
# chmod -R g+rw /var/www

Those commands do the following:

1. Creates new group 'mygroup'
2. Adds ftp user to mygroup
3. Adds apache user to mygroup
4. Recursively grants group ownership to contents of /var/www/ to mygroup
5. Recursively grants group read & write perms to contents of /var/www/

You just need to make sure that files added in the future belong to the 'mygroup' group and have the appropriate permissions for both apache and ftp to read/write them.