virtualbox.org

Host is running Windows 7.
Guest is Debian 7.1.0 Wheezy

I develop PHP web applications in Windows and for this I have a fairly standard WAMP setup. I want to be able to browse to my Windows (www) folder from my guest (Debian running LAMP) so that I can check that everything runs smoothly in Linux.

My first thought was to use the shared folder facility to share the Host's www folder. I hoped to be able to configure the Guest's Apache to use this as it's localhost. This didn't work because of permissions - I wasn't permitted to change the ownership of the shared folder.

My second thought was to make it so that the Guest's browser could "see" the Host's localhost. I have read here (and elsewhere) that this may involve bridges and wotnot, but this is way beyond my understanding.

I don't know if either method is possible but I would be grateful for any advice.

This topic is actually not Virtualbox related. You "simply" have to setup a regular share between two computers, in this case a windows share would be the easiest.
There are many howto on internet already about this.

I think that would be the easiest in your case. MAke sure you set the network mode to Host-Only or Bridged. NAT will not work (or at least, not worth the pain) for this.