ftp to webserver - not as rot

[Anita Lewis <ajlewis2@intac.com>]

This may be a dumb question on the wrong list, but here goes.

I'm learning to set up a server via remote.  We've got a mail server going
and mailman as well.  We have apache going and have put some pages in
/var/www.  There's a firewall on it and it is set so that we can send and
receive mail, access the mail list, bring up pages in a browser, ssh in as
users, and ftp in as users.  We set it up so that root cannot ftp or ssh in.

A user can ftp in and work on pages in their own public_html, but those
pages would appear in /~username. I want to be able to work on pages in
/var/www, because those pages come up when the domain name is accessed via
browser.  /var/www is root.root 

Is there a way other than dropping the pages off as user via ftp, ssh and su
to root and move them, to do this?  I'm thinking maybe there is a way using
groups.  Or is there something wrong with my thinking about not allowing
root ftp?

Thanks.
Anita