need some help here...

these are the lines in my httpd.conf:

Listen *.80
NameVirtualHost 192.168.0.183
<VirtualHost 192.168.0.183>
DocumentRoot /home/user1
ServerAdmin admin@mail.com
ServerName user1
</VirtualHost>

note: the IP address supplied above is what i get from "#/sbin/ifconfig -a". i use 127.0.0.1 alternately

but everytime i access http://user1 then it's looking for http://www.user1.com. how can i set i t up so that it will serve my /home/user1 folder? just like http://localhost serves /var/www/html... for local testing only

Put user1 in your hosts file. accessing http://www.user1.com is a browser thing to help you find sites you don't know the suffix of.