I've built a simple web editor using Code Mirror. I can't seem to wrap my mind around how the permissions work for such a thing. Essentially I need to make it so one particular script can over write and create new files anywhere in the webroot. The editor is also in the webroot fyi.

Server is Ubuntu Server 16.04 LTS

Just to confirm:

1. When using this web editor from a web browser, when it attempts to save a file to the webroot it will be using the permissions and groups of www-data right?

2. If I add my username to the www-data group, will that allow my username (wh33t) and www-data to alter files in the webroot? I will still sometimes need to edit the files with a regular text editor and I'll be doing that over SSH as my username or locally at the machine (VM).

3. Finally, what permissions do I need to set on the entire webroot to make each file editable?

Any tips greatly appreciated.

I would expect it to be using the permissions of the user you are running as.

Not unless you have given the www-data group write permissions which would of course, give any member of www-data write permissions.

If you want to edit files in a sub-directory of the /var/www/html (or whatever your Document Root is) you can change the ownership of the directories to your user on the local machine. I don't know how you would do it over SSH, I don't use it.

And what user is it that serves web pages? www-data right?

Yes, but I still need the files to be able to be served over the web. Am I over complicating this?

Your question is about editing files you have in your Document Root, the standards being /var/www/html or /home/user/public_html.
In the first instance, the directories/files in /var/www/html can be owned by the user and should be if you want to edit them as a user. In your case that would be wh33t.

If you use the standard public_html directory in /home/wh33t, the owner:group would be wh33t:wh33t.
If you have some other non-standard location, I don't know. The above works for me in both instances but this is just on a localhost. Obviously, there are other settings necessary and I don't really use apache enough to give any more advice.

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So it's an editor for writing html? Or is it an editor that runs in a web browser?

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Yes, basically you login to a back end over the web, and there is a directory browser and a code editing window so you can build and update the site entirely through the website itself.

Are you using a web framework or is it just CGI?

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It's part of my own CMS system I've steadily been building and using for live clients over the years. It's all written in plain PHP/JS/Mysql with a bit of Bash and Cron jobs.