I know similar questions have been asked, but I couldn't find a solution because I'm not looking for a command to give new rights to the directory, I would like to understand it. I'm very new to Ubuntu, have installed the server and Apache2 (not LAMP, or at least not aware of it). I access the server by SFTP. I would like to move my existing website to the /var/www directory, but of course by default I don't have permission to copy files and folders.
I'm not looking for a code, but can somebody explain to a beginner: What is the way to go in such a case? I have trouble to believe that the first thing I have to do is to lower the permissions. Thanks