Setup Apache Virtual Hosts on Ubuntu OS

 

What is Apache Virtual Host

 

Virtual Hosting is a method of hosting multiple domain names on a single server( or a pool of servers).  This allows one server to share its resources, such as memory and processor cycles, without requiring all services provided to use the same host name. There are two types of virtual hosting in Apache, namely IP-based virtual hosting and name-based virtual hosting. With IP-based virtual hosting, you can host multiple websites or domains on the same system, but each website/domain has different IP address. With name-based virtual hosting, you can host multiple websites/domains on the same IP address.

 

How to setup virtual host on Ubuntu OS

 

In order to work this out first you need to access the following:

  • A sudo user logged in
  • An Apache web server which you can install by running command in terminal sudo apt install apache2

After you have accessed above we will follow the following steps:

Step 1 – Create Directory

Firstly we need to create a directory to keep our website data. For this you can use your domain names. I’ll be using dummy domain names to provide an example . You can create directories by using following commands in terminal.

$ sudo mkdir -p /var/www/codingcafe1.com/public_html
$ sudo mkdir -p /var/www/codingcafe2.com/public_html

We should now change the permissions for non-root user to modify files in the directory. This can be done by following terminal commands.

$ sudo chown -R $USER:$USER /var/www/codingcafe1.com/public_html
$ sudo chown -R $USER:$USER /var/www/codingcafe2.com/public_html

Additionally we also write a command for access to file and folders.

$ sudo chmod -R 755 /var/www

Step 2 – Create Demo Pages for each virtual host

Create an index.html in your directory craeted above

$ nano /var/www/codingcafe1.com/public_html/index.html
$ nano /var/www/codingcafe2.com/public_html/index.html

Step 3 – Create Virtual Host Files

Apache comes with a default virtual host file 000.default.conf file. We’ll copy it over to create a virtual host file for each of our domains. We will create virtual host file by using command

$ sudo cp /etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default.conf /etc/apache2/sites-available/codingcafe1.com.conf

Now edit this newly created file in your editor

$ sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/codingcafe1.com.conf

You can also use vim editor and command will be $ sudo /etc/apache2/sites-available# vim codingcafe1.com.conf

We will modify this file for our domain

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerAdmin admin@codingcafe1.com
    ServerName codingcafe1.com
    ServerAlias www.codingcafe1.com
    DocumentRoot /var/www/codingcafe1.com/public_html
    ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
    CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined
</VirtualHost>

After changes save and close the file.

Copy First Virtual Host and Customize for Second Domain

Now we have first virtual host and we will create virtual host for second domain by copying that file and adjusting as needed. We will copy by using command

$ sudo cp /etc/apache2/sites-available/codingcafe1.com.conf /etc/apache2/sites-available/codingcafe2.com.conf

Open this file throughr editor and make changes accordingly

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerAdmin admin@codingcafe2.com
    ServerName codingcafe2.com
    ServerAlias www.codingcafe2.com
    DocumentRoot /var/www/codingcafe2.com/public_html
    ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
    CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined
</VirtualHost>

Save and close the file.

Step 5 – Enable the New Virtual Host Files

Now as our virtual host files have been created , next task is to enable them. For enabling we use command

$ sudo a2ensite codingcafe1.com.conf
$ sudo a2ensite codingcafe2.com.conf

Next, disable the default site defined in 000-default.conf:

$ sudo a2dissite 000-default.conf

Now after above is done , we need to restart Apache server . We will use command

$ sudo systemctl restart apache2

Your server should now be set up to serve above two websites.

Step 5 – Set Up Hosts File

If you are working on a local server then you have to register your domain names in /etc/hosts file. For this you have to edit hosts file by editor or through Vim editor command $ sudo nano /etc# vim hosts This will look like

127.0.0.1 localhost
127.0.1.1 guest-desktop
your_server_IP codingcafe1.com
your_server_IP codingcafe2.com

Save and close the file. This will direct any requests for codingcafe1.com and codingcafe2.com on our computer and send them to our server.

Now our process has been completed and your domain names are ready to be hit on broswer.

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