Mac OS X 10.5: Web Sharing - Relocated Home directory leads to "Forbidden 403" website message

Issue or symptom

If your home directory location has been changed from the default location, your Personal Web Sharing content may not be accessible to others.

Note: If this issue occurs under different circumstances (the user's Home has not been relocated), follow the steps in Mac OS X 10.5: Web Sharing - "Forbidden 403" message appears instead of website content.

Solution

To resolve this issue, edit the user account's Web Sharing configuration file to point at the correct location of your Home. In the following instructions, replace "myname" with your username (this is the same name as your user's Home folder in the Users folder.)

1. In the Finder, from the Go menu choose Go to Folder.
2. Type: /etc/apache2/users/
3. Click Go.
4. Drag "myname.conf" to the desktop. If you do not see myname.conf, follow steps 1 through 6 in this article to create that file on the desktop.
5. Double-click the desktop copy of "myname.conf".
6. Replace the string "/Users/myname/Sites/" with the correct path to your home directory.
7. Save the file.
8. Follow the steps from 8 through to 20 in this article.

You should now be able to access your website content as expected.