All right... I have my server set up and I have 4 Joomla! sites residing in /var/www/. Each site directory and the files underneath it are all root:www-pub according to this post:
What's the best way of handling permissions for Apache 2's user www-data in /var/www?
My user, cdog, is part of the www-pub, as directed by the above post and, after more research, umask is set up properly.
The issue is that when I login to the Joomla! back end... all of the directories are unwritable, meaning I cannot update configuration files, edit templates or even install/update plugins/extensions, etc.
Joomla! was not installed into these directories, the directories were moved (cloned via git) to the server and the subsequent working of the directories (as described in the link above) was performed.
The rights for all directories and files is as follows (i only used a few examples):
administrator rwxrwsr-x root:www-pub
cache rwxrwsr-x root:www-pub
images rwxrwsr-x root:www-pub
modules rwxrwsr-x root:www-pub
tmp rwxrwsr-x root:www-pub
index.php rw-rw-r-- root:www-pub
What is the cause of my directories/files not being accessible by the Joomla back end Administrator?