If you haven't been introduced to 'SELinux', you'll have some reading to do. It's an additional security layer, which is used for a number of services. In short you'll have to run the following command in the user's home directory.
chcon -R -t httpd_sys_content_t public_html
See the document at www.linuxhomenetworking.com/linux-hn/apachebasic.htm
For now, I'm turing this 'SELinux' feature off, because my current standpoint is that I don't really like these kinds of 'firewall' type of security approaches. Instead, I think server shouldn't be able to access unwanted files in the first place. I'll have to revisit the SELinux issue later.
