Problems configuring VirtualHost in Apache2 on Ubuntu 12.04

After reading through various tutorials [1] I still can't get my VirtualHost settings to work as desired. I'm getting a 403 Forbidden when I try to use a VirtualHost with a directory below my user directory as its DocumentRoot.

What I've done so far

• Created file /etc/apache2/sites-available/workspace with following content:

  NameVirtualHost *:80 <VirtualHost *:80> ServerName project-site DocumentRoot /home/user/Workspace/project/site </VirtualHost> 

• Edited file /etc/hosts now yielding:

  127.0.0.1 localhost 127.0.1.1 my-machine # The following lines are desirable for IPv6 capable hosts ::1 ip6-localhost ip6-loopback fe00::0 ip6-localnet ff00::0 ip6-mcastprefix ff02::1 ip6-allnodes ff02::2 ip6-allrouters # VirtualHosts added by me 127.0.0.1 project-site 

• Enabled virtual hosts using sudo a2ensite workspace

• Restarted Apache using sudo services apache2 restart
• Tried opening http://project-site and http://project-site/test.html (where test.html is present in /home/user/Workspace/project/site/) in my webbrowser

What happens

• Restarting Apache I get the following messages on the command line:

  * Restarting web server apache2 apache2: Could not reliably determine the server's fully qualified domain name, using 127.0.1.1 for ServerName [Sun May 13 10:33:37 2012] [warn] NameVirtualHost *:80 has no VirtualHosts [ OK ] 

• Opening either http://project-site or http://project-site/test.html a "403 Forbidden" is served.

What should happen

I'd like to have the contents of /home/user/Workspace/project/site being served when I browse to http://project-site.

What I learned so far

From reading similar questions on this site I learned that this is probably a permission problem [2]. Files in /home/user/Workspace/project/site might not be readable by www-data. But how do I know or correct this?

Furthermore .htaccess files were mentioned [3] being located in

/home/.htaccess /home/user/.htacces [...] /home/user/path/to/project/.htaccess 

and possibly not readable. I never created them, I don't want them, will I need them?

The second answer to another question [4] made me use NameVirtualHost responsible for the warning on restart of Apache. Is it necessary and if, how do I use it properly?

Any help is much appreciated! Tell me, if you need to know anything else to locate the problem.

Ressources

1. http://www.thegeekstuff.com/2011/07/apache-virtual-host/, http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/vhosts/name-based.html, http://mintarticles.com/read/software-articles/multiple-virtual-hosts-in-xampplampp-in-ubuntu,977/, http://www.pgorecki.pl/content/virtual-host-na-localho%C5%9Bcie-apache-ubuntu, ...
2. Apache VirtualHost 403 Forbidden
3. Ubuntu, Apache, virtualhost and Access forbidden
4. VirtualHost configuration