Tell apache to point to a subfolder as default starting point for public

Question

What would be the different methods of telling Apache to serve up httpdocs/public instead of httpdocs as the default starting point?

I want to be able to have my includes and logs directories behind the publicly accessible folder.

I know that htaccess is possible, but I've seen a file before that looked something like httpdocs => public ... I could be off, but it was some kind of pointer.

[httpdocs]
-[includes]
-[logs]
-[public] <-- what's served up to the public
--index.php

Answer 1

In your Apache configuration file, find a line with 'DocumentRoot' and modify accordingly.

EDIT:

Regarding your comment, then you're looking for this:

DocumentRoot httpdocs/public/

Though for the virtual-hosts request,

<VirtualHost *:80>
        ServerAdmin webmaster@sitename.com
        ServerName www.sitename.com
        DocumentRoot /var/www/sitename #STILL DOCUMENTROOT!!!
        <Directory />
                Options FollowSymLinks
                AllowOverride None
        </Directory>
        <Directory /var/www/sitename/>
                Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
                AllowOverride All
                Order allow,deny
                allow from all
        </Directory>

        ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/error_sitename.log

        # Possible values include: debug, info, notice, warn, error, crit,
        # alert, emerg.
        LogLevel warn

        CustomLog /var/log/apache2/access_sitename.log combined

</VirtualHost>

Though note still, it uses the DocumentRoot directive. You can have as many sites as you want. Modify the paths to match the httpdocs/public directory, and I assume that inside /public/ there will be directories for other virtual hosts?

If this isn't what you wanted, please re-phrase your question.