Change localhost directory for Yosemite Apache 2.4 - macos

Question

I have clean installed Mac OSX Yosemite but I cant configure the Apache 2.4 like I have always done on older OSX versions.
Here is what I want to do : set the "localhost" directory to "/Users/username/Public/".
But, everything I tried won't work, I always get a "Forbiden, can't access to /" or I get the default "It works!" page...
How to simply reroot my localhost ?
Thx
EDIT (thanks to Krister Andersson for the answer)
For Mac OSX 10.10 Yosemite
I also post the changes I had to do to keep things running.
In "/etc/apache2/users/", I created a file named by my username like this "myUsername.conf".
You can get your username by typing "id" in terminal. You should find your username at start in "uid=501(myUsername)".
In this new "myUsername.conf" file, just copy past this:
<Directory "/Users/myUsername/Sites/">
AllowOverride All
Options Indexes MultiViews
Options +FollowSymLinks
Require all granted
</Directory>
Dont forgive to change the myUsername value.
Then, in the "/etc/apache2/httpd.conf" file, uncomment all these two lines:
167 #LoadModule userdir_module libexec/apache2/mod_userdir.so
169 #LoadModule php5_module libexec/apache2/libphp5.so
Line 236, change the directory of "DocumentRoot" to whatever you want.
Line 250, set "Options" to "Options "Options Indexes FollowSymLinks Multiviews".
Line 258, set "AllowOverride None" to "AllowOverride All".
Line 263, set "Require all denied" to "Require all granted"
In Terminal, restart apache by typing "sudo apachectl restart".
It work's for me on Mac OS X 10.10 Yosemite clean install.

Answer 1

I've just installed Yosemite and I managed to change the DocumentRoot without any problems. First I modified the following lines in /private/etc/apache2/httpd.conf:
DocumentRoot "/Library/WebServer/Documents"
<Directory "/Library/WebServer/Documents">
Options FollowSymLinks Multiviews
AllowOverride None
</Directory>
to:
DocumentRoot "<CUSTOM_PATH>"
<Directory "<CUSTOM_PATH>">
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks Multiviews
AllowOverride All
</Directory>
The above will set a custom DocumentRoot, enable directory listing and allow configurations to be overridden by .htaccess files.
Then I restarted apache by executing sudo apachectl restart.
Another approach would be to set up a virtual host. First make sure so that the following line is uncommented in your /private/etc/apache2/httpd.conf file:
# Virtual hosts
#Include /private/etc/apache2/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf
Then you can add the following in the httpd-vhosts.conf file:
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerAdmin webmaster#example.local
DocumentRoot "/Library/WebServer/Documents"
ServerName example.local
ErrorLog "/private/var/log/apache2/example.local-error_log"
CustomLog "/private/var/log/apache2/example.local-access_log" common
<Directory "/Library/WebServer/Documents">
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks Multiviews
AllowOverride All
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>
The above will setup a document root for a new virtual host named example.local and enable directory listing and allow configurations to be overridden by .htaccess files. Of course your also will need to restart apache for the changes to take effect:
sudo apachectl restart

Answer 2

On El Capitan you should restart apache with "-k" flag:
sudo apachectl -k restart