Vhost Error: DocumentRoot must be a directory

Applies to:

Zend Server on Mac
Manually creating a vhost using TextEdit

Problem

It appears from our users' experience, that when you create a vhost manually under Apache conf, with TextEdit, the double quotes are inserted with non-standard characters (actually reversed).

Solutions

Option 1: Use a simple text editor to edit vhosts, then test Apache config before restarting (apachectl -t)

Option 2 (Easier): Use Zend Server UI Applications -> Virtual Hosts page to create and edit vhosts under Zend Server.

Note:
If you create vhosts using Zend Server, and you deploy a ZPK on them, the DocumentRoot of the vhost / domain would be overwritten by a patterned DocumentRoot directory under /usr/local/zend/var/apps including application name and version. This is by design - each deployment changes DocumentRoot dynamically, regardless of the default value which is defined in the Zend managed vhost conf.