Apache and symbolic link in /var/www/html

Question

I'm trying to create a symbolic link to /home/user/www from /var/www/html so I can access the directory in my home folder from the URL: http://localhost/www/

I did: ln -s /home/user/www /var/www/html but when i access the URL above, the server returns 403 Forbidden.

The directory /home/user/www has permissions 775.

I'm on Ubuntu 14.04.

Answer 1

1. Check /home/user/www and /var/www/html owners

Apache user\group must have access to /home, /home/user and /home/user/www paths

2. Check Apache configuration:

look for FollowSymLinks option

<Directory /var/www/html>
    ...
    Options FollowSymLinks
</Directory>

Answer 2

Set permissions for /home/user to 711 and see if that helps any. Keep in mind... localhost/www won't exist unless you have a folder called www inside of the DocumentRoot.

Also, you're better off using ~/public_html over symlinking /var/www/html to something in your home directory. Bad practice/juju.