By default the files in the Primary ibay are owned by 'admin:shared' with access rights of '-rw-r-----' -- not much chance that 'John Doe' is going to succeed in making changes...
You need to:
- set the access rights on the primary ibay to "write group, read everyone"
- add John Doe to a (the?) group that the Primary ibay belongs to ("shared" by default)
- deal with the ftp configuration issue that denies ftp access for members of groups:
http://forums.contribs.org/index.php?topic=37307.0... Or, symlink the folders that John Doe needs to edit into his FTP area, with access rights that allow the web server to read his changes
... Or change the owner for the Primary ibay to 'jdoe:shared':
chown -R jdoe:shared /home/e-smith/files/ibays/Primary/html/.
BUT: 'signal-event post-upgrade' or 'signal-event ibay-modify' or any of several other events will restore file ownership on the ibay contents to 'admin'.