I do my best work while tipsy! lol...
But basically, you'll be giving your site access to utilize any options available in .htaccess files; I use it on all of mine that i need more control on and that I don't want to have to issue in the main apache configuration file.
An example:
<VirtualHost 65.19.133.39:80>
##SuexecUserGroup "#504" "#501"
ServerName undergroundnews.com
ServerAlias www.undergroundnews.com
DocumentRoot /home/ugn/public_html
ErrorLog /home/ugn/logs/error_log
CustomLog /home/ugn/logs/access_log combined
ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ /home/ugn/cgi-bin/
<Directory /home/ugn/public_html>
Options Indexes IncludesNOEXEC FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride All
AcceptPathInfo On
allow from all
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>