To create a group webdev (or whatever...I'd suggest against dev, because it can get confused with the /dev directory) do this: groupadd <groupname> To add the users to it: usermod -G <group1>,<group2>... You must specify all of the groups that the user belongs to at the time as well as the new group. To change the /var/www directory to allow them to write to it: chgrp -R <group> /var/www chmod -R g+rw /var/www find /var/www -type d |xargs chmod g+x You might not need the last one if your directories already have group execute permissions. Users can (by default with debian) create a directory /home/<user>/public_html that will be available to apache as http://<hostname>/~<user>/ See the apache documentation sections on 'UserDir' for information about this and the section on 'Directory' for information about how to change what a user may and may not do with this personal site.
Hope this helps. The o'reilly book on apache admining is a really good place to find out more about this, but I wouldn't bother if you're just doing a web-site for a few friends.
