Thanks for the input!

do I remove the localhost from the hosts?

2upmedia said:

Add DirectoryIndex:

DocumentRoot "/Users/username/sites/ldemo/public" DirectoryIndex index.php

Change this:

127.0.0.2 www.ldemo.dev

To this:

127.0.0.1 www.ldemo.dev

Run

$ apachectl -S

If your ldemo.dev VHOST doesn't show up in the output, then there's probably another install of apache on your system.

got this .. hmm.. what did that command do? compile or something? lol learning as I go .. is there a dummies book on server settings etc?

apachectl -S
Syntax error on line 44 of /private/etc/apache2/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf:
order takes one argument, 'allow,deny', 'deny,allow', or 'mutual-failure'

Fixed that up .. ran the command again ..

$ apachectl -S
Warning: DocumentRoot [/usr/docs/dummy-host2.example.com] does not exist
httpd: Could not reliably determine the server's fully qualified domain name, using xyz.local for ServerName
VirtualHost configuration:
wildcard NameVirtualHosts and _default_ servers:
*:80                   is a NameVirtualHost
         default server ldemo.dev (/private/etc/apache2/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf:32)
         port 80 namevhost ldemo.dev (/private/etc/apache2/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf:32)
         port 80 namevhost dummy-host2.example.com (/private/etc/apache2/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf:52)
Syntax OK

That worked. changed the hosts file. restarted everything. Thanks 2upmedia!