[luau] Apache...again

[Mike]

I still have problems w/ apache and mandrake 9.  Please help

I want to make a web-site available to the internet, but i can't get it to 
work on localhost at all...

i tried makeing the "public_html" folder under my user name (not root).  But 
how am i going to get my Domain to point to it?   i know how to make it point 
to my IP addres.  But how am i going to make it point to 
"/user_name/public_html/"? 

what is a good mail (smtp) server software for linux?

one last thing, how can i change/ install stuff on the system without having 
to log out and log in as root?