Folder Permissions with WordPress

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I'm running into an issue that I can't seem to resolve. There appears to be an issue when using XAMPP as "daemon", and a lot of websites instruct me to change User and Group in httpd.conf from "daemon" to "myusername" and "staff". This is supposed to resolve plugin updates downloading and installing automatically.

The problem is when I try to run plugin updates in WordPress, I'm prompted for FTP credentials. This isn't normal and I'm not usually asked for this information. Normally the files download into the wp-content directory and update automatically.

If I change the user as instructed in httpd.conf, I can access the site fine, and I can access the WP Admin login screen fine, but once logged in, if I try to go to any page in wp-admin, I get an error "No Data Received". I'm unfamiliar with this error and don't know what I can do to fix it. When the user is set to "daemon", I can access everything fine, but the plugin updates don't work.

Anyone else run into this on OS X Yosemite? I had AMPPS installed and it was working great, but I went to update to a new version of PHP and that's when things started breaking. I couldn't get a newer version of the app setup, so I'm trying XAMPP again. Please let me know if you can help. Thanks!