When it comes to my FTP server I installed VSFTPD and I added users into var/www then I enabled public_html and I don’t know if I had done that the correct way, I think I did it also in the var/www directy like this.
# mkdir ~/public_public
Then I enabled the user directory
# ln -s ../mods-available/userdir.conf usredir.conf
# ln -s ../mods-available/userdir.load userdir.loda

Then restarted Apache
# /etc/init.d/apache2 restat

I must say I lost now

So as I said above New install with lamp but I have now uninstalled lamp, so if you can help me with this it would be great

Also…

Question: Did you edit your /etc/hosts file? It’s hard to tell (I’m not sitting at your server), maybe your FTP app cannot find the server via the hostname you use>
Question: When you first installed proFTPD, did you: sudo aptitude install proftpd ucf menu? (Did you select “standalone”?)

I had a similar issue, I could not upload files to the web server (/var/www). I realized that I needed to change the ownership to the correct group www-data so: sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www

One of the things many (including myself) don’t do, is select LAMP. Why? Because it pre-installs a generic LAMP server. Instead, it’s better to install a base server and then add the LAMP components as per requirements.

Better to use aptitude when possible (instead of apt-get). Better to install SSH instead of Telnet.

Better to add/change users AFTER you’ve installed and got things working. Keeps things less complicated, this way when you have something working, make a change and things don’t work, then you can always go back a step to where everything was working.

If you cannot upload files, this means that vsftpd is not working as expected (you indicate it’s working?). Have you checked file/directory permissions (chmod)? Have you checked file/directory ownership (chown)?

When you change ownership of /var/www to ‘bill’, you knocked out the www-data, did you?

You’re correct, there is no “public_html”, instead the path is: /var/www/…