Cannot connect to localhost after permission change

[1888software]

To answer the outstanding questions:

a. no I did not understand what I was doing
b. to the best of my knowledge yes www-data was the default setup

root is the superuser
laptop is the non-root user

I need to be able to work as the user called "laptop".
"laptop" needs read write - all - access to files in the /var/www/ folder or
alternatively somehow it needs to be setup so that I can easily copy edit and move files logged in as "laptop"

My undertstanding is that it is NOT a good idea to login and work as root. That's why I think I should use "laptop".

WhoamI to be posted to private...

Thank you.

[3rdalbum]

The default permissions are correct - only root should be able to write to /var/www and you should copy your files to that folder as root instead of loosening it's permissions.

By default, /var/www is readable by all, but your changes stopped that. Now that you have partly rectified that by making www-data the owner, you could try restarting Apache (rebooting will do this, or use 'sudo service apache2 restart').

You could also try adding read permission to /var/www for all, which is a default permission anyway:

sudo chmod a+r /var/www

[linuxonbute]

True. only root should have write access if it is internet facing. The OP said this is just for testing himself and will not be accessible from the internet.
So I don't think giving write permissions to his non root user should be a problem although he should be able to write using sudo.
Then again i might be wrong - I often am.

[1888software]

WOW!
linuxonbute did an outstanding job on the fix. Case closed, with THANKS!