Prerequisites:

1. Apache2 web server.
2. PHP (optional).

Create a PHP workspace folder

Create a directory to serve as your PHP workspace. This will hold your PHP projects and files.

Open a terminal and create a new directory for the PHP workspace, replacing username with your actual username. The following command will create the php-workspace folder within the Documents directory. You can replace /home/username/Documents/ with any path you prefer.

mkdir -p /home/username/Documents/php-workspace

Update Apache configuration

Configure Apache to recognize the new directory for serving files. Open the Apache configuration file in a text editor (/etc/apache2/apache2.conf).

Add a Directory directive for the new directory at the end of the file (or in an appropriate section if preferred). Update the path with your actual username and the new workspace location.

<Directory /home/username/Documents/php-workspace>
    Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
    AllowOverride All
    Require all granted
</Directory>

Change the DocumentRoot

Configure Apache to use the new directory as its default document root. Open the 000-default.conf file for editing (/etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default.conf).

Change the DocumentRoot directive to point to your newly created php-workspace folder. Replace /home/username/Documents/php-workspace with your actual path.

# DocumentRoot /var/www/html
DocumentRoot /home/username/Documents/php-workspace

Set proper permissions

In order for Apache to access and serve files from the new directory, you need to set the proper permissions for the workspace folder.

sudo chmod +x /home/username
sudo chmod +x /home/username/Documents
sudo chmod +x /home/username/Documents/php-workspace

sudo chmod -R 755 /home/username/Documents/php-workspace
sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /home/username/Documents/php-workspace

Restart Apache

Restart Apache for the new configuration changes to take effect.

sudo systemctl restart apache2

Test the configuration

Move the index.html file from the /var/www/html directory to /home/username/Documents/php-workspace or create a simple PHP file inside the php-workspace directory to test if everything is set up properly. For example, create a file named index.php.

<?php
phpinfo();
?>

Open the web browser and navigate to http://localhost/index.php.

Conclusion

You have successfully changed the default document root for Apache2 to a new location (/home/username/Documents/php-workspace), configured Apache to allow access to that directory, and set the necessary permissions. Your server is now set up to serve PHP projects from the new location.