A basic setup requires little configuration. If you moved any directories after Apache was installed, they should be updated in httpd.conf. Here are just a couple of examples:

ServerRoot   "/usr/local/apache"
DocumentRoot "/usr/local/apache/docs"

You can change the port to which the server is bound by editing the Port directive. This example sets the port to 8080 (the default for the HTTP protocol is 80):

Port 8080

You might want to change the user and group names under which the server will run. If Apache is started by the user root (which is generally the case), the parent process will continue to run as root, but its children will run as the user and group specified in the configuration, thereby avoiding many potential security problems. This example uses the httpd user and group:

User httpd
Group httpd

Make sure that the user and group httpd already exist. They can be created using useradd(1) and groupadd(1) or equivalent utilities.

Many other directives may need to be configured as well. In addition to directives that take a single value, there are whole sections of the configuration (such as the <Directory> and <Location>sections) that apply to only certain areas of the web space. The httpd.conf file supplies a few examples, and these will be discussed shortly.