Use of -p is not recommended: set file permissions explicitly

Stefan told me not to recommend scp -r ~/code/example username@host.example.com:/var/www/.

The p to preserve modes is potentially dangerous if you do not have production level security on your local copy. Setting file system permissions is a topic on its own. If you want to allow public uploads the corresponding permission must be set on the files directory which must be created first. That's a step in the deployment we do not even mention in the list at the start of this chapter. The suggested way by Drupal is to give the webserver write access to the sites folder.