google for a tutorial on how to setup a virtual host on apache. that should do it

I followed this and configured apache2: https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-set-up-apache-virtual-hosts-on-ubuntu-14-04-lts

On other topic I installed composer (and curl). the landing page is still blank, doen't show any error. Do I need Git/hub? and on the git topic do I end up paying anything for Git?

Github isn't required (although useful), last time I checked private repositories required a paid account at github, but you can get a limited number of free private repos at bitbucket

take a look at your apache error log and the php error log

Thanks guys! what was the first problem was in VirtualHosts, that file is called sites-available I think, and lies in the apache2 directory. The DocumentRoot in that file is supposed to point to index.php which, in 5.3, is in /public. Just saying DocumentRoot /var/www/projectname will not work, but DocumentRoot /var/www/projectname/public solved my (first) problem (the problem this thread is about).