Apache public_html question

[Don Russell]

I'm writing a small php web application at home and developing in my 
public_html directory.

That works fine, except I'm trying to create a file from the php page. I 
thought I'd be able to create a file in the same directory with the php 
script, but the fopen(...,'wb') fails with a permission error.

I don't mind moving my development work into /var/www/html, but then my 
problem is when I try to update the script from Dreamweaver on my other 
machine, I don't know how to set up ftp so I get write access to /var/www

So... I need a solution for 1 or both of these:

1 - How to I grant wite access to my public_html so the php web  page 
can write to it?

2 - And/or... how do I set up an ftp account so it has write access to 
/var/www?

Thank you