ownership of public_html folder

Hi Guys,

I'm trying to configure automatic sftp updates with wordpress on a new linode ubuntu 10.04 I created.

I set up vsftpd, done the required configuration, creating a new sftp user and adding him to www-data group.

Then changed the group folder to /srv/www/domain/public_html

This has enabled the automatic updates and all was good on WP-admin

however, since the ownership of public-html has changed, i lost access to wordpress front-end ( index.php and so )

I had to change the folder ownership back to nobody to get Wordpress back, but ofcourse lost the automatic updates settings. And since apache is no longer an owner, I ended up having to change permissions to 777 to enable wordpress to write.

I figured out that I need to set the ownership to something like

chown sftp(as the ftp user) : apache /srv/www/domain/public_html

but that is not possible for some reason and I'm not sure weather its the right thing to do.

I want to achieve the following:

-Enable wordpress ( apache ) to write to the public_html as an owner

-Enable sftp to that folder and the sftp user is part of www-data group

I basically need professional help at this stage. Appreciate any tips