default apache index.html shows up even though i have a sites-enabled file

I have installed apache2, there is a config file in /etc/apache2/sites-available and sites-enabled has a soft link to it. on the server, however, i still see /var/www/html/index.html. I have tried restarting apache with no luck. If I stop apache, nothing shows up on the box, so I'm certain it's not a multiple dameon issue or something like that. Can anyone think of any reason why apache is not seeing the enabled site?

In /etc/apache2/apache2.con, I have

# Include the virtual host configurations:
IncludeOptional sites-enabled/*.conf

But other than that, I don't see why apache would be hard wired to show the default index.

Thanks for any help, Kevin

UPDATE

here is the site config file:

 <VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName example.com
    DocumentRoot "/var/www/sites/example.com/current/public"
    ErrorLog "/var/log/apache2/example.com-error_log"
    CustomLog "/var/log/apache2/example.com-access_log" common
    <Directory "/var/www/sites/example.com/current/public">
        Options All
        AllowOverride All
        Order allow,deny
        Allow from all
    </Directory>
    RewriteEngine On
    # Remove the www
    RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.example.com$ [NC]
    RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://example.com/ [R=301,L]
</VirtualHost>

UPDATE

As an experiment, I removed the closing ">" to the config file to make it not well-formed, restarted apache and got no errors. This tells me the sites-enabled configs are not even being parsed.

Only accessing the site as http://example.com will trigger the host you have configured. Going to http://www.example.com , the server's IP, or any other method will fall back to Apache default.

Edit: For clarification, you can do one of the following:

• If you want this as your default/only host, then don't even bother with VirtualHost tags, and apply your configuration at the server level
• Add a Server Alias line like ServerAlias example.com *.example.com
• Add a new VirtualHost for www.example.com and define the redirect there

The Debian version of Apache 2.4 specifically loads *.conf in the apache2.conf:

IncludeOptional sites-enabled/*.conf

It turns out my config file didn't end in .conf so it was never being loaded. Renaming it from example.com to example.conf fixed the problem.