How do I change the root directory of an Apache server? [closed]

Please note, that this only applies for Ubuntu 14.04 LTS (Trusty Tahr) and newer releases.

In my Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, the document root was set to /var/www/html. It was configured in the following file:

/etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default.conf

So just do a

sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default.conf

and change the following line to what you want:

DocumentRoot /var/www/html

Also do a

sudo nano /etc/apache2/apache2.conf

and find this:

<Directory /var/www/html/>Options Indexes FollowSymLinksAllowOverride NoneRequire all granted</Directory>

And change /var/www/html to your preferred directory and save it.

After you saved your changes, just restart the Apache 2 web server and you'll be done :)

sudo service apache2 restart

If you prefer a graphical text editor, you can just replace the sudo nano with a gksu gedit.

You need to change the DocumentRoot setting in your httpd.conf file. Chances are it will be under something like /etc/apache2/conf/httpd.conf.

Use your favourite editor (I recommend Vim) and look for the DocumentRoot and change it to /users/spencer/projects. Also look a little further down for a setting that looks like this:

<Directory "/var/www">

You will also want to change what is in the quotes to your new directory. This gives Apache access to read from that directory when a user makes a request that call on it.

Now restart your Apache service (httpd -k restart) and you should be good to go.

Apache 2 site configuration files are now typically kept in /etc/apache2/sites-available/ (Debian, Ubuntu, etc.).

I had to edit /etc/apache2/sites-available/default. The lines are the same as mentioned by RDL.