The UserDir directive specifies a directory out of which per-user content is loaded. This directive may take several different forms.

If a path is given which does not start with a leading slash, it is assumed to be a directory path relative to the home directory of the specified user. Given this configuration:

the URL http://example.com/~rbowen/file.html will be translated to the file path /home/rbowen/public_html/file.html

If a path is given starting with a slash, a directory path will be constructed using that path, plus the username specified. Given this configuration:

the URL http://example.com/~rbowen/file.html will be translated to the file path /var/html/rbowen/file.html

If a path is provided which contains an asterisk (*), a path is used in which the asterisk is replaced with the username. Given this configuration:

the URL http://example.com/~rbowen/file.html will be translated to the file path /var/www/rbowen/docs/file.html

Using the syntax show in the UserDir documentation, you can restrict what users are permitted to use this functionality:

The configuration above will enable the feature for all users except for those listed in the disabled statement. You can, likewise, disable the feature for all but a few users by using a configuration like the following:

See UserDir documentation for additional examples.

In order to give each user their own cgi-bin directory, you can use a Directory directive to make a particular subdirectory of a user's home directory cgi-enabled.

If you want to allows users to modify the server configuration in their web space, they will need to use .htaccess files to make these changed. Ensure that you have set AllowOverride to a value sufficient for the directives that you want to permit the users to modify. See the .htaccess tutorial for additional details on how this works.