I am using rsync to replicate a web folder structure from a local server to a remote server. Both servers are ubuntu linux. I use the following command, and it works well:
As far as I know, you cannot chown files to somebody else than you, if you are not root. So you would have to rsync using the www-data account, as all files will be created with the specified user as owner. So you need to chown the files afterwards.