http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=306884

Finally I found that /private/etc/apache2/httpd.conf sets the default access to “deny from all”. I created the file /private/etc/apache2/users/michael.conf with

Order allow,deny
Allow from all

and then I was able to view the pages in my Sites folder.

It looks like you’ve got an error in the directory you’re looking for. It should have been /Users/richard/Sites. It seems you may be getting that mixed up with /Library/WebServer/Documents, which is the default – but is not in your user directory – it’s in the /Library directory at the root of the drive.

It’s possible http://localhost/ is still serving /Library/WebServer/Documents/index.html.en (the last two letters will change if your language is set to something other than English – or blow away all the files in that directory and simply use index.html). Modify that page to be sure – if you don’t see the changes on refresh, it’s being served from somewhere else.

As for the 403 error, it’s likely caused by permissions, but everything in your /Users/richard/Sites directory should be readable by Apache. Hopefully some of the other comments on this post will help – otherwise post again and I’ll see if I can help.

And thanks for the kind words!
-Michael

The problem as pointed out by Richard above is with permissions: the Users/richard directory was set at drwx——; having messed about for most of the day trying to fix the 403 problem via the config files all I had to do was to chmod to drwxr-xr-x and it works!

But a spooky thing; while http://localhost/~richard/ gave a 403 error, http://localhost/ worked OK and served the standard Apache welcome page – even although this is apparently set to the Users/richard/Library/WebServer/Documents directory (and Library has defaut rx permission only for user.) I had noticed that it wasn’t coming from there – in fact, this directory wasn’t even initialised. What is going on?!

Finally I must say I’m a bit disappointed; after ten years of absence from the Mac world one of the reasons I changed back is that they are supposed to work! So maybe not many people will be running Apache on the MacBook Air, but how can they get this so wrong?

Thanks anyway everyone, a really good, informative and informed thread!

Check the order of your virtual hosts in your users.conf file. Make sure the first one is for localhost (pointing to your /Users/me/Sites directory) and add all other virtual hosts after that.

Also, if this is a clean install of Leopard, make sure you uncommented NameVirtualHost *:80 in /etc/apache2/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf. I need to re-write this tutorial from scratch including all steps instead of relying on the old post with updates for Leopard. I’ll let you know when that’s available!

-Michael

Any ideas why?