8. Hosting a Static Website and Changing the Configuration

8.6 Changing the Document Root

By Ravindra Bagale · Last updated: 27 September 2026

Samja website /var/www/portfolio madhun serve karaychi aahe. Nginx madhe root, Apache madhe DocumentRoot aani tyacha <Directory> – donhi badlayche.

# 1. create the folder and a test page
sudo mkdir -p /var/www/portfolio
echo '<h1>Portfolio served from /var/www/portfolio</h1>' | sudo tee /var/www/portfolio/index.html
sudo chmod 755 /var/www/portfolio
sudo chmod 644 /var/www/portfolio/index.html

Amazon Linux 2023 / CentOS Stream 9: create a site file (the built-in block inside nginx.conf still exists, so we check which block is the default):

sudo tee /etc/nginx/conf.d/portfolio.conf > /dev/null <<'__EOCONF__'
server {
    listen 80;
    listen [::]:80;
    server_name _;
    root /var/www/portfolio;
    index index.html;
    location / { try_files $uri $uri/ =404; }
}
__EOCONF__
grep -n "default_server" /etc/nginx/nginx.conf      # if found, remove "default_server" there
sudo nginx -t && sudo service nginx reload

Ubuntu: edit the site file and change one line:

sudo sed -i 's#root /var/www/html;#root /var/www/portfolio;#' /etc/nginx/sites-available/default
grep -n "root" /etc/nginx/sites-available/default
sudo nginx -t && sudo service nginx reload

CentOS Stream 9 only: SELinux. Folders under /var/www automatically get the correct httpd_sys_content_t label. For any other path, such as /srv/portfolio or /data/site, you must teach SELinux about it, or you'll get 403 Forbidden:

sudo yum install -y policycoreutils-python-utils           # provides semanage
sudo semanage fcontext -a -t httpd_sys_content_t "/srv/portfolio(/.*)?"
sudo restorecon -Rv /srv/portfolio
ls -Z /srv/portfolio                                        # should show httpd_sys_content_t

Verify with curl -s http://localhost | head -3 and then from your browser.

Apache:

Option A: edit the virtual host (recommended). Change DocumentRoot and the matching <Directory> path together:

# Ubuntu: default site
sudo sed -i 's#/var/www/html#/var/www/portfolio#' /etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default.conf
sudo tee /etc/apache2/conf-available/portfolio-dir.conf > /dev/null <<'__EOCONF__'
<Directory /var/www/portfolio>
    Options -Indexes +FollowSymLinks
    AllowOverride All
    Require all granted
</Directory>
__EOCONF__
sudo a2enconf portfolio-dir
sudo apache2ctl configtest && sudo service apache2 reload

# Amazon Linux 2023 / CentOS Stream 9: own virtual host
sudo tee /etc/httpd/conf.d/portfolio.conf > /dev/null <<'__EOCONF__'
<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName portfolio.local
    DocumentRoot /var/www/portfolio
    <Directory /var/www/portfolio>
        Options -Indexes +FollowSymLinks
        AllowOverride All
        Require all granted
    </Directory>
</VirtualHost>
__EOCONF__
sudo apachectl configtest && sudo service httpd reload

Option B: change the global default in /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf, which has both DocumentRoot "/var/www/html" and <Directory "/var/www/html">. Change both, then test and reload. It works, but Option A is cleaner.