0. Introduction

Sometimes, we have multiple projects and we would like to access the Project 1′s website by typing ‘http://project1/’ in the browser address bar. And Project 2 may be at ‘http://project2/’. Virtual hosts are what you need for your development work. This guide requires you to have basic knowledge of Apache. This guide assumes you haven’t done additional configuration to your Apache. You must have already got Apache2 installed.

Also remember that you should always do a backup of every configuration file you change.

1. Add a new host in Ubuntu

You should only be adding new hosts if you want to develop multiples sites in your local computer. Skip this section to go to Section 2 if you just want to add virtual hosts to a remote server.

Type in the following command into your terminal, you need to sudo here:

You should see something like this:

Add an additional line so that it looks this way:

That way, we can now access http://project1/ through the browser. We’ll have to tell Apache what to do when someone visits that page.

2. Additional Apache configuration

Apache2′s configuration is located in /etc/apache2/apache2.conf. To edit it:

We want to use virtual hosts so we add the following lines to the end of the configuration file:

Now we can

3. Create a new site for Apache

Apache allows you to specify sites so that you can enable and disable sites. Go to the sites-available directory:

These are the sites available for me. Yours may differ:

We are going to create a new site by creating a new file for it:

Paste the following into your newly created site (‘project1′).

Some things to note:

• ServerName is the same name to added to your host file. In the beginning of this guide, we used ‘project1′ as our hostname.
• DocumentRoot is the folder Apache would load when the user visits http://project1/
• Remember to replace the rest of the folders to the correct locations.

We’ve specified the basic configuration for the site ‘project1′. You can save the file with Ctrl+O in nano.

Now we have an additional site:

4. Enabling the site we’ve just created

Now that the site is created, we have to enable it. The following command enables the site named ‘project1′ (filename):

To disable the site, you basically give the following command:

You may notice that enabling the site basically copy the ‘project1′ file from /etc/apache2/sites-available to /etc/apache2/sites-enabled. Disabling the site removes the corresponding file from /etc/apache2/sites-enabled.

After you enable or disable the site, you’ll be prompted to do a restart:

If the server did not manage to restart successfully, it is likely that there is error with the configuration files. You may try disabling the site and reloading it again to test if it’s with the site file.

5. It’s done!

It’s done so test it out in your browser by visiting http://project1/.

0. Introduction

Sometimes, we have multiple projects and we would like to access the Project 1′s website by typing ‘http://project1/’ in the browser address bar. And Project 2 may be at ‘http://project2/’. This is how we can configure Windows and Apache to do just that. While this guide is written for XAMPP’s Apache, if the instruction applies pretty much to Apache too. You can put your configuration into ‘httpd.conf’.

1. Add a new host in Windows

First go to your hosts file, it is located at C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts for most people. If you’re using Windows Vista, you need to run command prompt as administrator. Type ‘cmd’ into the search bar and right click on the ‘cmd’ search result to point to ‘Run as administrator’.

Type in the following command into your command prompt:

You will see notepad open and your hosts file looking something like this:

Add an additional line so that it looks this way:

Order doesn’t matter, I just want it to look nicer. ‘::1′ is for IPv6′s localhost by the way.

2. Add VirtualHost into Apache’s configuration

Now edit our httpd-vhosts.conf. It should be located in C:\xampp\apache\conf\extra\httpd-vhosts.conf.

Uncomment the NameVirtualHost line and add new virtual hosts. I add ‘project1′ and ‘localhost’:

We’ll have to add localhost in our httpd-vhosts.conf file so that the localhost to continue working. You can add as many virtual hosts as you want in any order. You can even add hosts like ‘project2.localhost’.

3. That’s all

Oh yeah, and remember to restart your Apache server so that your new settings can be reflected. Hope it helps.