Where my Apache settings are
This is just a note to self, because I run Apache to test some online experiments locally.
Settings are in /etc/apache2
I changed the document root to my home directory; this setting is in /etc/apache2/sites-available/default. I allow only connections from 127.0.0.1 (localhost), this setting is also in that file.
More general settings are in /etc/apache2/httpd.conf and in /etc/apache2/apache2.conf. I don’t think I’ve changed anything in those files. httpd.conf seems to load the PHP module, I may have set that.
Addendum
To make your settings take effect, gracefully restart Apache 2:
sudo apache2ctl restart
Addendum 2
Just had to redo the settings on a new Ubuntu install. After changing the document root to a folder in my home directory, I was getting “403 Forbidden” even though that new document root folder was chmod 755 (drwxr-xr-x), world readable and executable. Turns out that the home directory itself was drwxr--r-- and I needed to chmod 755 that as well.