Step One — Create the Directory Structure
The first step that we are going to take is to make a directory structure that will hold the site data that we will be serving to visitors.
Our document root (the top-level directory that Apache looks at to find content to serve) will be set to individual directories under the /var/www directory. We will create a directory here for both of the virtual hosts we plan on making.
Within each of these directories, we will create a public_html folder that will hold our actual files. This gives us some flexibility in our hosting.
For instance, for our sites, we're going to make our directories like this:
sudo mkdir -p /var/www/example.com/public_html
The portions in red represent the domain names that we are wanting to serve from our VPS.
document root (the top-level directory that Apache looks at to find content to serve) will be set to individual directories under the /var/www directory. We will create a directory here for both of the virtual hosts we plan on making.
public_html folder that will hold our actual files. This gives us some flexibility in our hosting.
Step Two — Grant Permissions
Now we have the directory structure for our files, but they are owned by our root user. If we want our regular user to be able to modify files in our web directories, we can change the ownership by doing this:
sudo chown -R $USER:$USER /var/www/example.com/public_html
The $USER variable will take the value of the user you are currently logged in as when you press "ENTER". By doing this, our regular user now owns the public_html subdirectories where we will be storing our content.
We should also modify our permissions a little bit to ensure that read access is permitted to the general web directory and all of the files and folders it contains so that pages can be served correctly:
sudo chmod -R 755 /var/www
Your web server should now have the permissions it needs to serve content, and your user should be able to create content within the necessary folders.
$USER variable will take the value of the user you are currently logged in as when you press "ENTER". By doing this, our regular user now owns the public_html subdirectories where we will be storing our content.
sudo chmod -R 755 /var/www
Step Three — Create Demo Pages for Each Virtual Host
We have our directory structure in place. Let's create some content to serve.
We're just going for a demonstration, so our pages will be very simple. We're just going to make an index.html page for each site.
Let's start with example.com. We can open up an index.html file in our editor by typing:
nano /var/www/example.com/public_html/index.html
In this file, create a simple HTML document that indicates the site it is connected to. My file looks like this:
<html>
<head>
<title>Welcome to Example.com!</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Success! The example.com virtual host is working!</h1>
</body>
</html>
Save and close this file as well. You now have the pages necessary to test the virtual host configuration.
index.html page for each site.
example.com. We can open up an index.html file in our editor by typing:
Step Four — Create New Virtual Host Files
Virtual host files are the files that specify the actual configuration of our virtual hosts and dictate how the Apache web server will respond to various domain requests.
Apache comes with a default virtual host file called 000-default.conf that we can use as a jumping off point. We are going to copy it over to create a virtual host file for each of our domains.
We will start with one domain, configure it, copy it for our second domain, and then make the few further adjustments needed. The default Ubuntu configuration requires that each virtual host file end in .conf.
000-default.conf that we can use as a jumping off point. We are going to copy it over to create a virtual host file for each of our domains.
.conf.
Create the First Virtual Host File
Start by copying the file for the first domain:
sudo cp /etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default.conf /etc/apache2/sites-available/example.com.conf
Open the new file in your editor with root privileges:
sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/example.com.conf
The file will look something like this (I've removed the comments here to make the file more approachable):
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
DocumentRoot /var/www/html
ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined
</VirtualHost>
As you can see, there's not much here. We will customize the items here for our first domain and add some additional directives. This virtual host section matches any requests that are made on port 80, the default HTTP port.
First, we need to change the ServerAdmin directive to an email that the site administrator can receive emails through.
ServerAdmin admin@example.com
After this, we need to add two directives. The first, called ServerName, establishes the base domain that should match for this virtual host definition. This will most likely be your domain. The second, calledServerAlias, defines further names that should match as if they were the base name. This is useful for matching hosts you defined, like www:
ServerName example.com
ServerAlias www.example.com
The only other thing we need to change for a basic virtual host file is the location of the document root for this domain. We already created the directory we need, so we just need to alter the DocumentRootdirective to reflect the directory we created:
DocumentRoot /var/www/example.com/public_html
In total, our virtualhost file should look like this:
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerAdmin admin@example.com
ServerName example.com
ServerAlias www.example.com
DocumentRoot /var/www/example.com/public_html
ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined
</VirtualHost>
Save and close the file when you are finished.
ServerAdmin directive to an email that the site administrator can receive emails through.
ServerName, establishes the base domain that should match for this virtual host definition. This will most likely be your domain. The second, calledServerAlias, defines further names that should match as if they were the base name. This is useful for matching hosts you defined, like www:
DocumentRootdirective to reflect the directory we created:
Step Five — Enable the New Virtual Host Files
Now that we have created our virtual host files, we must enable them. Apache includes some tools that allow us to do this.
We can use the a2ensite tool to enable each of our sites like this:
sudo a2ensite example.com.conf
When you are finished, you need to restart Apache to make these changes take effect:
sudo service apache2 restart
You will most likely receive a message saying something similar to:
* Restarting web server apache2
AH00558: apache2: Could not reliably determine the server's fully qualified domain name, using 127.0.0.1. Set the 'ServerName' directive globally to suppress this message
This is a harmless message that does not affect our site.
a2ensite tool to enable each of our sites like this:
sudo service apache2 restart
* Restarting web server apache2
AH00558: apache2: Could not reliably determine the server's fully qualified domain name, using 127.0.0.1. Set the 'ServerName' directive globally to suppress this message
Step Six — Set Up Local Hosts File (Optional)
If you haven't been using actual domain names that you own to test this procedure and have been using some example domains instead, you can at least test the functionality of this process by temporarily modifying the hosts file on your local computer.
This will intercept any requests for the domains that you configured and point them to your VPS server, just as the DNS system would do if you were using registered domains. This will only work from your computer though, and is simply useful for testing purposes.
Make sure you are operating on your local computer for these steps and not your VPS server. You will need to know the computer's administrative password or otherwise be a member of the administrative group.
If you are on a Mac or Linux computer, edit your local file with administrative privileges by typing:
sudo nano /etc/hosts
If you are on a Windows machine, you can find instructions on altering your hosts file here.
The details that you need to add are the public IP address of your VPS server followed by the domain you want to use to reach that VPS.
For the domains that I used in this guide, assuming that my VPS IP address is 111.111.111.111, I could add the following lines to the bottom of my hosts file:
127.0.0.1 localhost
127.0.1.1 guest-desktop
111.111.111.111 example.com
This will direct any requests for example.com and test.com on our computer and send them to our server at 111.111.111.111. This is what we want if we are not actually the owners of these domains in order to test our virtual hosts.
Save and close the file.
hosts file on your local computer.
sudo nano /etc/hosts
111.111.111.111, I could add the following lines to the bottom of my hosts file:
example.com and test.com on our computer and send them to our server at 111.111.111.111. This is what we want if we are not actually the owners of these domains in order to test our virtual hosts.
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