Why won't my local Apache open html pages?

Question

so, I'm running Apache on my laptop.

If I go to "localhost", I get the page that says,

If you can see this, it means that the installation of the Apache web server software on this system was successful. You may now add content to this directory and replace this page.

except, I can't add content and replace that page.

I can click on its links, and that works fine.

First of all, there's not even an "index.html" document in that directory. If I try to directly access one that I created with localhost/index.html, I get "the request URL was not found on the server." So, I'm not even sure where that page is coming from. I've searched for words in that page under the apache directory, and nothing turns up. It seems to redirect somewhere.

Just as a test, I KNOW that it loads localhost/manual/index.html (doesn't matter what that is) so I tried to replace that with something I've written, and I received the message

The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.

The error log says,

[Fri Sep 12 20:27:54 2008] [error] [client 127.0.0.1] Syntax error in type map, no ':' in C:/Program Files/Apache Group/Apache2/manual/index.html for header \r\n

But, that page works fine if I open directly with a browser.

so, basically, I don't know what I don't know here. I'm not sure what apache is looking for. I'm not sure if the error is in my config file, my html page, or what.

Oh, and the reason I want to open this using apache is (mainly) because I'm trying to test some php, so I'm trying to get apache to run locally.

Thanks.

Answer 1

"By default, your pages should be placed in the "C:\Program Files\Apache Group\Apache2\htdocs" folder for Apache 2.0 and the "C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Apache2.2\htdocs" folder for Apache 2.2. When your site is ready, simply delete the existing files in the folder and replace them with those you want to test."

From here.

Answer 2

OK,

To answer my own. . .I found that the "Listen" directive in the configuration file had been set to "Listen 80" instead of "Listen localhost: 80".

Also, localhost/htdocs/index.html doesn't work, but localhost/index.html does.

Hopefully this can help someone in the future.

Thanks, Schroeder.