Apache DocumentRoot permissions

[Stewart Williams]

Hi all,

I have a read quite a lot of documentation on Apache, and I have got it 
up and running fine. However, I cannot seem to find an answer to what 
should be a basic question...

With security in mind, what should be the correct/safest permissions of 
the DocumentRoot (e.g. /var/www/html ) directory to be able to upload 
pages/files as a standard user?

The user is me (I just don't want to do it as root all the time), the 
site is basic html, and I will be uploading via sftp.

Also, in the future, if I start to use PHP pages, do these file 
permissions need changing again, as security risk will increase?

Maybe it comes down to basic file permissions, but I just don't want to 
leave myself open as I'm new to setting up Apache.

Thanks in advance.

Stewart