Create Virtual Apache Hosts

Virtual Hosts


Apache2 has the concept of sites, which are separate configuration files that Apache2 will read. These are available in /etc/apache2/sites-available. By default, there is one site available called default this is what you will see when you browse to http://localhost or http://127.0.0.1. You can have many different site configurations available, and activate only those that you need.


As an example, we want the default site to be /home/user/public_html/hosangit.com. To do this, we must create a new site and then enable it in Apache2.


To create a new site:


    Copy the default website as a starting point. sudo cp /etc/apache2/sites-available/default /etc/apache2/sites-available/hosangit


    Edit the new configuration file in a text editor "sudo nano" on the command line or "gksudo gedit", for example: gksudo gedit /etc/apache2/sites-available/hosangit


    Change the DocumentRoot to point to the new location. For example, /home/user/public_html/hosangit.com


    Change the Directory directive, replace to


    You can also set separate logs for each site. To do this, change the ErrorLog and CustomLog directives. This is optional, but handy if you have many sites

    Save the file


Now, we must deactivate the old site, and activate our new one. Ubuntu provides two small utilities that take care of this: a2ensite (apache2enable site) and a2dissite (apache2disable site).


$ sudo a2dissite default && sudo a2ensite hosangit


Finally, we restart Apache2:


$ sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart


If you have not created /home/user/public_html/hosangit.com, you will receive an warning message


To test the new site, create a file in /home/user/public_html/hosangit.com:


$ echo 'Hello! It is working!' > /home/user/public_html/hosangit.com/index.html


Finally, browse to http://localhost/