Why is Mac OS X Lion Apache DocumentRoot /usr/htdocs?

Solution 1:

When "Web Sharing" is NOT enabled it takes /usr/htdocs as the root. When you enable "Web Sharing" it will take the config file at /etc/apache2/httpd.conf. The directory will be the one specified near the following section on the file.

<IfDefine WEBSHARING_ON>
#
# DocumentRoot: The directory out of which you will serve your
# documents. By default, all requests are taken from this directory, but
# symbolic links and aliases may be used to point to other locations.
#
DocumentRoot "/Library/WebServer/Documents"

Also you con use your "Sites" directory at /Users/USERNAME/Sites accessing with localhost/~USERNAME.