Cannot get site loaded with Apache on Mac - macos

Question

I'm running El Capitan and trying to get my website hosted locally for development with Apache (that came with the OS). I followed the instructions here exactly. I made an anthony.conf file and put the Directory text in there, I replaced the actual directory with /Users/anthony/dev/web/unfinished-asteroids/ and then placed my web files in there. I started apache and navigated for localhost/~anthony but I get the
Not Found: The requested URL /~anthony was not found on this server.
standard 404 error. When I navigate to localhost it works fine and I get the "It works" from the index.html that is located in /Library/WebServer/Documents, I even changed that index.html file and it works fine.
Any ideas why I'm not able to see my website using apache? All I did was download this github repository and place it in my unfinished-asteroids folder, the index.html is at the root.

Answer 1

So it looks like there are a couple of extra steps that you need to do. There isn't really anything too special about apache that comes with OSX, so your standard apache configurations will work. but to get Userdir (~username) working on El Capitan,this is what I had to do
Edit /etc/apache2/httpd.conf
on (or near) line 166, uncomment
loadModule userdir_module libexec/apache2/mod_userdir.so
then on line 493 uncomment
Include /private/etc/apache2/extra/httpd-userdir.conf
then edit file /etc/apache2/extra/httpd-userdir.conf
uncomment line 16
Include /private/etc/apache2/users/*.conf
then in /etc/apache2/users/anthony.conf
<Directory "/Users/anthony/Sites/">
Options Indexes MultiViews
Require all granted
</Directory>
then sudo apachectl restart
That should make http://localhost/~anthony point to your sites directory.
Logs are stored in /var/log/apache2
Now if all you want is web access to say your dev directory you can do something like this.. (don't make any of the changes listed above)
in /etc/apache2/other/ create a file called mydev.conf (name doesn't really matter, save it needs to end in .conf')
and put this in that file
Alias /dev /Users/anthony/dev/
<Directory "/Users/anthony/dev">
Options Indexes MultiViews
Require all granted
</Directory>
and reload apache (sudo apachectl restart)
then you will be able to access your dev folder at http://localhost/dev and should be able to access your page at http://localhost/dev/web/unfinished-asteroids/
you can adjust the paths at will above, just need to make sure that the user or group _www has access to it, and that paths in the alias and the directory match.