Seems to be pretty much up and running now after several uninstalls and reinstalls. I downloaded Webmin, but didn't need to use it in the end.

After much messing around, Apache 2, MySQL and PHP are pretty much configured how I want them (for now).

The problem with permissions is still there to some extent. As long as there is, say, a index.php file in the apache doc root, then it pulls everything up ok on the browser. if however I try to access the folder itself, or a subfolder, it comes up with a 403 'You do not have permission to access [foldername] on this server'. It's only a small thing, but I'm not sure why it happens. I've looked in Webmin, but can't see any options I could alter to change it.

Anyway, I am several steps forward from where I was. I am just hoping to find a good Linux web editor now.

Thanks for all your help.

Might want to check out Apache's settings on directory browsing (Document Options, Generate directory indexes I think it was called? or check out the settings for .htaccess files)
I'm messing with that myself.

Got it.

In the end, I added a <Directory/> directive to the httpd2.conf file. My doc root is var/www/html, but when I tried to add

<Directory /var/www/html >
Options +Indexes
</Directory>

It wouldn't work, even though the docs here: http://httpd.apache.org/docs-2.0/sections.html say that it applies to that directory and any subdirectories. I found that it did work if you named a specific sub-directory, say;

<Directory /var/www/html/admin >
Options +Indexes
</Directory>

But this was a hassle to do, since I wanted index access for all the subdirectories (I find it useful sometimes when testing scripts). So in the end I put this in the httpd2.conf file:

<Directory ~ "^/var/www/html/.*/">
Options +Indexes
</Directory>

It works fine - all subdirectories now show as indexes if I go to them direct.

Here's a new one I came across today, New for me anyway

http://urpmi-addmedia.org/