How to create Virtual Host on Ubuntu Apache ?

Step 1: Create First Virtual Host

In Apache on Ubuntu all the virtual host configuration files are stored under /etc/apache2/sites-available directory.

Create a new Virtual Host configuration file by copying default file.

By using following linux terminal command.

cp /etc/apache2/sites-available/default /etc/apache2/sites-available/site1.example.com

Step 2:

Now Edit new virtual host configuration file and update as per your requirement. My site1.example.com configuration file looks like below.

Linux command :  nano  /etc/apache2/sites-available/site1.example.com

        ServerAdmin webmaster@site1.example.com

        ServerName site1.example.com

        DocumentRoot /var/www/site1.example.com/httpdocs

       

                Options FollowSymLinks

                AllowOverride None

       

                Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews

                AllowOverride None

                Order allow,deny

                allow from all

       

        ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ /usr/lib/cgi-bin/

       

                AllowOverride None

                Options +ExecCGI -MultiViews +SymLinksIfOwnerMatch

                Order allow,deny

                Allow from all

       

        ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log

        LogLevel warn

        CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined

Step 3:

Now create a directory structure in your system, as per defined in above virtual host, and assign proper ownership and file permission.

Linux Command :

$ mkdir -p /var/www/site1.example.com/httpdocs

$ chmod 755 /var/www/site1.example.com/httpdocs

$ chown www-data.www-data /var/www/site1.example.com/httpdocs

Now upload your project files on /var/www/site1.example.com/httpdocs/ directory. or just a inxex.html for test.

Step 4: Enable First Virtual Host

Now we have successfully created our first virtual host in Apache.

Now use following command to enable this Virtual Host, So that Apache can load this configuration file on next reload.

$ a2ensite site1.example.com

Basically this creates a soft link of Virtual Host configuration file in directory /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/.

To activate the new configuration, we need to run:

$ service apache2 reload

Now you can access http://site1.example.com in your browser.

If you don’t have dns configured for your domain, do a local mapping by adding an entry in /etc/hosts files.