Using pscp and getting permission denied

Beware of the following that when you write

sudo usermod -G www-data <username>

The option -G will make the specified user () a member of the particular group(s) that are specified. So the above statement will make the user a part of group www-data BUT will remove the user from any other group that the user belongs to. To avoid this you must either add the option -a or specify all the current groups that you want the user to be a part of. I accidently took the user "administrator" out of the sudo group because I didn't know this. So if you want the specified user to keep it's current group membership then write the following command.

sudo usermod -G -a www-data <username>

For more info regarding the usermod command, visit:

Ubuntu manpages - usermod

If you own the server:

Add yourself to the www-data group:

sudo usermod -a -G www-data <username>

And set the right permissions:

sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/
sudo chmod -R 0775 /var/www/

This should do the trick.