Apache: Virtual hosts

Table of contents

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1. Introduction
2. Directories Creation
3. Home page for each Virtual Host
4. Apache2 Virtual Host creation
5. Optional step
6. Final Result

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Introduction

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The term Virtual Host refers to the practice of running more than one web site (such as company1.example.com and company2.example.com) on a single machine. 

Virtual hosts can be "IP-based", meaning that you have a different IP address for every web site, or "name-based", meaning that you have multiple names running on each IP address. The fact that they are running on the same physical server is not apparent to the end user. 

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Directories Creation

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First things first, we need two directories for the virtual hosts that we'll be creating.

The way to go is to use the mkdir -p [route/path]:

-p will create the parents folders for the following folders in case they don't exist.

mkdir -p /var/www/sergichafer.com/public_html


mkdir -p /var/www/plusOne.com/public_html

Before getting into the following step, don't forget to change read permissions.

sudo chmod -R 755 /var/www 

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Home page for each Virtual Host

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Following the track of the tutorial, we'll need a homepage that presents each new virtual host so that we can test if our tutorial is successful.

Let's create those index.html inside each public_html foto:



nano /var/www/sergichafer.com/public_html/index.html 

nano /var/www/plusOne.com/public_html/index.html 

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Apache2 Virtual Host creation

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This is a tricky point, let's learn a bit about the Apache virtual hosts conf files:

Virtual hosts conf files are files that specify the actual configuration of a virtual host, meaning that they specify what apache must respond to a domain call.

Example:

If apache recieve a call for sergichafer.com, it will resolve that the index.html to return will be the one located insider /var/www/sergichafer.com/public_html/index.html.

Apache offers a default configuration file called 000-default.conf that can be found at /etc/apache2/sites-available; this will serve us as a base to start a new one:

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

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

This following created files will have to look like this(change my virtual host domain name for yours):

Domain configuration explanation:

• ServerName: Equals the exact definition of our domain name.
• ServerAlias: Defines alternatives to this domain that apache2 will redirect to the ServerName specified domain.

As always with apache, it's time to activate the recent changes and restart the server.

sudo a2ensite sergichafer.com.conf

sudo a2ensite plusOne.com.conf

sudo systemctl reload apache2

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Optional step(Without having an actual domain)

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This is a optional step, so it will only be performed in case the used domains are not on your property or are just examples(this step must be used just to test it worked).

Edit your /etc/hosts file and add the following lines marked in bold(change the IP and the domain for yours):

127.0.0.1   localhost
127.0.1.1   guest-desktop

111.111.111.111 example.com
111.111.111.111 example2.com

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Final result(Without having an actual domain)

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Here is the final result:

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Final result(Having actual domains)

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In case you bought a domain, the way to go is as simple as repeating the following steps:

1. Directories Creation
2. Home page for each Virtual Host
3. Apache2 Virtual Host creation

But, instead of using fake domains, use the real ones.

In my case, I bought chaferser.tk and sergislm4.tk through a website called freenom.

https://www.freenom.com/es/index.html

If you use this website, my actual configuration for the domains was the following one:

And of course, here it is the final result:

What do you think? Will you use it? 

Thank you for reading my amateur tutorial and I hope we'll keep improving together!