Repoint global DocumentRoot, still run PHP - php

Question

I have a server which is serving up a web page for a project.
The project is stored in a user directory on the server. (/home/user/theproject/webstuff).
Originally, I was using the userdir module to make this accessible via http://theserver/user and a symbolic link from /home/user/public_html to /home/user/theproject/webstuff to indicate the location of the files.
But, ultimately, it would be better to serve the files from http://theserver without having to indicate the user (since there really is only one user).
And then I had a truly brilliant idea.
Instead, I would rewrite my /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default.conf file to read:
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerAdmin webmaster#localhost
DocumentRoot /home/user/theproject/webstuff
ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined
</VirtualHost>
Now everything is lovely and good... except that PHP doesn't run any more.
Instead, the following error is raised:
AH01630: client denied by server configuration: /home/user/theproject/webstuff/script.php
To the client, this appears as a 403 Forbidden error.
So this is something of a dual question:
Is there a better way to achieve my goal?
How can I enable PHP in this situation?

Answer 1

You can find a well written description of this error with several possible solutions here:
http://wiki.apache.org/httpd/ClientDeniedByServerConfiguration

Answer 2

As it turns out, I had to edit /etc/apache2/apache2.conf.
On Line 164 there is a block which I had to modify as follows:
#<Directory /var/www>
<Directory /home/user/theproject/webstuff>
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride None
Require all granted
</Directory>