To create a new site:

* Copy the default website as a starting point. sudo cp /etc/apache2/sites-available/default /etc/apache2/sites-available/mysite
* Edit the new configuration file in a text editor "sudo nano" on the command line or "gksudo gedit", for example: gksudo gedit /etc/apache2/sites-available/mysite
* Change the DocumentRoot to point to the new location. For example, /home/user/public_html/
* Change the Directory directive, replace <Directory /var/www/> to <Directory /home/user/public_html/>
* You can also set separate logs for each site. To do this, change the ErrorLog and CustomLog directives. This is optional, but handy if you have many sites
* Save the file

Now, we must deactivate the old site, and activate our new one. Ubuntu provides two small utilities that take care of this: a2ensite (apache2enable site) and a2dissite (apache2disable site).

sudo a2dissite default && sudo a2ensite mysite

Finally, we restart Apache2:

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

If you have not created /home/user/public_html/, you will receive an warning message

To test the new site, create a file in /home/user/public_html/:

echo '<b>Hello! It is working!</b>' > /home/user/public_html/index.html

Finally, browse to http://localhost/