problem with ftp pushing files and me not having access as regular user

I've run visudo and added my username to the list to be able to do whatever I need to rather than logging in as root user.

I have my svn push o开发者_开发百科ut file's through ftp as user www-data, and therefore when I try to cd into those directories, I get permission denied.

Any thoughts? Can I add my username to some config file somewhere to have access to all files?

When you use sudo, you are running as the root user, but only for that particular command. I think the easiest thing to do would be to ensure that you and www-data are in the same group, and set the group permissions accordingly. (e.g., chmod 775 yourdir)