How can you add a sFTP user to CentOS? Here in this post we go through the command needed to realize this on a Vultr CentOS VPS.

Add User

Run the following command to add a new user and set the password:

adduser developer
passwd developer

SSH Config Change

Do a  nano /etc/ssh/sshd_config. Then scroll to the very bottom of the file and append the following configuration snippet /etc/ssh/sshd_config:
. . .

Match User developer
 ForceCommand internal-sftp
 PasswordAuthentication yes
 ChrootDirectory /var/sftp
 # PermitTunnel no
 AllowAgentForwarding no
 AllowTcpForwarding no
 X11Forwarding no

Update: On CentOS the sshd daemon refused to restart due to line PermitTunnel no. Caused the error PermitTunnel is not allowed within a match block. Without it SFTP nor SSH was possible so this whole block has been commented out until further notice.

Add User to Group Nginx

After that do a :

 usermod -a -G nginx developer

to add the user to the group nginx. Then restart the ssh server:  /etc/init.d/sshd start

NB If you are running Apache then the current owner and group are likely apache.

CHMOD and CHOWN Tweaks

Then change the owner of /var/www/html/* to developer (or username of your choice) using

chown -R developer:nginx html/

and then make sure new files added get these permission using:

chmod 2755 html/

After that you are good to go!