Linux Permissions & CHMOD/CHOWN with Opencart

Hi All -
I need some guidance ... When I setup a New OpenCart installation, upon logging into Admin, I get a bunch of "permission denied" errors, and somewhere it explained to set certain files (or maybe all files) to allow Apache ownership, which works! (CHOWN -R Apache:apache ...)
The propblem is, after I do that, I can no longer login as an FTP User ... I need to login to the Server as "root" to be able to access the OpenCart web folder.
Does anyone know the "correct" way to resolve this?

Generally, folders need to be 755 and files 644 when you upload them.

DL