What is virtual host?
According to Wikipedia: Virtual hosting is a method for hosting multiple domain names on a computer using a single IP address. This allows one machine to share its resources, such as memory and processor cycles, to use its resources more efficiently.
Setup for Windows Platform
At first let me tell you my setup, I have windows in my C: drive and I have installed XAMPP in my D: drive. For windows platform (with XAMPP) you need to do 3 things. Thing 1: go to your XAMPP installation drive then in my case it is D:, and open the httpd-xampp.conf file. In my case it is located here D:\xampp\apache\conf\extra. Thing 2: Add these lines of code in the httpd-xampp.conf
<VirtualHost *:80> DocumentRoot "D:/xampp/htdocs/project/path" ServerName yourhostname.local </VirtualHost>
NOTE: One thing to note here is, the default host (localhost) must be the last host defined in this file, Otherwise worlds will be at WAR!!!. So your final look of the httpd-vhosts.conf file should be something similar to this
NameVirtualHost *:80 <VirtualHost *:80> DocumentRoot "D:/xampp/htdocs/project/path" ServerName yourhostname.local </VirtualHost> <VirtualHost *:80> DocumentRoot "D:/xampp/htdocs" ServerName localhost </VirtualHost>
NOTE: If you have installed xampp in your windows root directory then you might be unable to save the edited file. In that case open the notepad in admin mood (Run as administrator) by right clicking on its icon. Then open the file from within notepad by selecting File > Open... Thing 3: You need to register your custom domain (in my case it is yourhostname.local) in the window’s host file. As I have my windows in C: drive so my host file locates here C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc. Now read again what I said in my last NOTE point and then open the host file using notepad by following that instruction. In that host file, add this line, DON’T delete any existing lines in that file (yeah that’s common sense!).
127.0.0.1 yourhostname.local
and Save the file. and One More Thing: OK I admit it is now becoming 4 things, so Just restart your apache server very quickly by selecting XAMPP control panel. If it fails to restart for some unknown reason just restart your PC.
Setup for Linux Platform
For Linux, it is quite straight forward. Step 1: Add a sites entry in this directory /etc/apache2/sites-available. If you don’t know how just copy the default as yourhostname.local
$ sudo cp default yourhostname.local
Step 2: Open your newly created site file (In this case it is yourhostname.local) with any linux editor, I’ll use VIM.
$ sudo vi yourhostname.local
Then add the following lines of code then save and close.
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName yourhostname.local
DocumentRoot /home/username/yourproject/path
<Directory /var/username/yourproject/path>
DirectoryIndex index.php
AllowOverride All
Order allow,deny
allow from all
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>
Step 3: Register the host in the /etc/host file
$ sudo vi /etc/host
Step 4: Enable the new host with this command
$sudo a2ensite yourhostname.local
Step 5: Restart apache server. Command for this is
$ sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart
Or
$ sudo service apache reload
That’s it for now. Thanks.
invincible 