Ubuntu Servers :: Handle Webroot Permissions When Uploading?

I have been plagued by this for some time. How many times do you need to run chown -R user:www-data or similar to your webroot directory.I have been searching via Google and this forum. I have yet to find a definite answer to handle uploading and creating new files usable by apache2.Scenarios can vary. Some folks put there webroot inside a /home directory. Some users leave the default location as /var/www.I have a two part question.. Why do I often read "Apache runs as user=www-data, therefore files need to be readable by such (www-data)", but the default install in Ubuntu includes an index.html with the following?

Code:
ls -l /var/www
total 4

[code]....