Unix is sure powerful tho – Stellablue

Thanks for the tip!

I DO NOT recommend giving EVERYONE read permission to your home directory, nor do I recommend the method described above of changing “Allow from all” in /private/etc/apache2/httpd.conf.

Rather, I recommend creating a separate “/Users/Shared” directory with a corresponding weak Shared user account, then hosting content from the Shared directory.

You can also use /Users/Shared to keep things like photos, music, virtual disk images, and other items that you do not necessarily wish FileVault to encrypt.

As root, do these steps:

# create /Users/Shared and user Shared with no login capability:

mkdir /Users/Shared
mkdir /Users/Shared/Sites
mkdir /Users/Shared/Sites/images

dscl localhost -create /Local/Default/Users/Shared
dscl . -create /Users/Shared UniqueID 511
[dsexport users.out /Local/Default dsRecTypeStandard:Users ; less users.out to find next UniqueID -- see http://osxdaily.com/2007/10/29/how-to-add-a-user-from-the-os-x-command-line-works-with-leopard/
dscl . -create /Users/Shared UserShell /usr/bin/false # no login for Shared!
dscl . -create /Users/Shared PrimaryGroupID 20 # staff
dscl . -create /Users/Shared NFSHomeDirectory /Users/Shared
# change ownership, permissions
chown -R Shared:staff /Users/Shared
chown -R 775 /Users/Shared

# create apache conf file
cp -p /etc/apache2/users/myusername.conf /etc/apache2/users/Shared.conf
nano /etc/apache2/users/Shared.conf
[Edit first line to use directory "/Users/Shared/Sites/"]
httpd -k restart

# copy over default web pages to /Users/Shared/Sites
cp -p ~myusername/Sites/index.html /Users/Shared/Sites
cp -p ~myusername/Sites/images/macosxlogo.gif /Users/Shared/Sites/images
cp -p ~myusername/Sites/images/apache_pb.gif /Users/Shared/Sites/images
cp -p ~myusername/Sites/images/web_share.gif /Users/Shared/Sites/images

Now log out of root, and either under a new shell (bash/sh/tcsh/whatever) or a new Terminal window, you ought to be able to “cd ~Shared” to get to /Users/Shared. Sanity check your permissions using:
ls -ld /Users/Shared. If you don’t want all staff to have write access to /Users/Shared and below, then:
chmod -R g-w /Users/Shared

Now Stop/Start System Preferences>Sharing>Web Sharing, and point your browser to:

http://localhost/~Shared

That should work. Now host from /Users/Shared without anyone being able access to your home directory. If you edited /private/etc/apache2/httpd.conf to “Allow from all” as default, change this back to “Deny from all” as default, and restart httpd and Web Sharing.

For those like me who forgot that they moved their home directory to another volume, remember to adapt the “<Directory "/Users/…" to the correct location, e.g. "_<