In this tutorial, we will show you how to set up Apache Virtual Hosts on Debian 9.
Using Apache Virtual Hosts you can host multiple domains on a single server. Apache will break its functionality and components into individual units so you can customize independently. The basic unit that describes an individual site or domain is called a virtual host.
Prerequisites
- A Debian 9 server with a non-root user with sudo privileges.
- Apache should installed and configured, as shown in How to Install Apache on Debian 9 Server.
- A domain name should pointing to your server IP address.
Creating the Directory Structure
First, we will make a directory structure where website data will be stored and serving to visitors for a domain. You can set the document root to any location that you want but it’s good practice to set in directory structure. Generally in all /var/www.
/var/www/
├── example1.com
│ └── public_html
├── example2.com
│ └── public_html
Let’s create document root directory for first domain. Execute following command to create directory :
sudo mkdir -p /var/www/example1.com/public_html
We will also create a index.html file under the domain document root directory for testing purpose. This page will be show by default when visitors will visit your site.
Creating a new index.html file using your favorite text editor by typing :
sudo nano /var/www/example1.com/public_html/index.html
Add the following lines into it:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<meta charset="utf-8">
<title>Welcome!!</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Success! example1.com set up completed!</h1>
</body>
</html>Since we created the directory and files with sudo user so they are owned by our root user. We will change document root directories ownership to avoid permission issue for our regular user. Thus, regular user can modify files in our web directories without any issues.
sudo chown -R www-data: /var/www/example1.com
Create Virtual Host Files
For a Debian machine, Apache Virtual Host configuration files are located at /etc/apache2/sites-available directory. So we will create Virtual Host configuration files at this location.
Create a new file using your choice text editor by typing :
sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/example1.com.conf
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName example1.com
ServerAlias www.example1.com
DocumentRoot /var/www/example1.com/public_html
<Directory /var/www/example1.com/public_html>
Options -Indexes +FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride All
</Directory>
ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/example1.com-error.log
CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/example1.com-access.log combined
</VirtualHost>- ServerName: This should be your domain name and match with virtual host configuration.
- ServerAlias: All other domains or subdomains that should match for this virtual host as well, usually the www subdomain.
- DocumentRoot: Path of virtual host directory that from which Apache will serve the domain files.
- Options: This directive controls which server features are available in a specific directory.
- -Indexes: It will prevent directory listings.
- FollowSymLinks: Apache will follow the symbolic links if this option is enabled.
- AllowOverride: Specifies which directives declared in the .htaccess file can override the configuration directives.
- ErrorLog, CustomLog: Specifies the location for log files.
You can give any names to your configuration file but it’s recommended to give file name same as domain name.
Now, We will enable virtual host file by creating symbolic links to the /etc/apache2/sites-enabled directory.
In Debian systems you can create symbolic links either by helper script or can create manually. To create using a2ensite helper script execute following command :
sudo a2ensite example1.com
To create symbolic link manually type :
sudo ln -s /etc/apache2/sites-available/example1.com.conf /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/
Now check the syntax by type :
sudo apachectl configtest
It will show below output if there are no errors:
Output
Syntax OK
You must restart apache2 service to get changes effect by below command :
sudo systemctl restart apache2
You can verify by opening your http://example1.com to your web browser and it will show you as following :
Finally, you created a virtual host for a single domain, like this you can repeat for multiple domains on a single server.
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