Apache Virtual Hosts allows you to host multiple websites on a single server. Using Virtual Hosts, you can customize each website by create separate document root, security policy and different SSL certificates. The basic unit that describes an individual site or domain. It is known as virtual host. This tutorial explains how to set up Apache Virtual Hosts on Ubuntu 22.04 Jammy Jellyfish.
Prerequisites
- A Ubuntu 22.04 server with a non-root user with sudo privileges.
- Apache should installed and configured, as shown in How to Install Apache on Ubuntu 22.04.
- A domain name should pointing to your server IP address.
Create Apache Virtual Host on Ubuntu
Apache virtual hosts are similar to server blocks of Nginx web server. Apache on Ubuntu has one server block enabled by default that is configured to serve documents from the /var/www/html directory. On Ubuntu 22.04 you need to have multiple sites on one server to create a separate Apache virtual host for each. Perform the below steps to continue:
Creating the Directory Structure
At first, we will make document root directory where the website data will be stored and serving to visitors for a domain. You can set the document root to any location that you want. It’s best practice to set in directory structure. Commonly, stored at /var/www.
/var/www/ ├── example1.com │ └── public_html ├── example2.com │ └── public_html
Let’s create document root directory for first domain. Follow the lines below:
sudo mkdir -p /var/www/example1.com/public_html
Create a index.html file under the domain document root directory for testing purpose. By default, this page will display to visitor.
Run the below command to create a new index.html file using your favorite text editor :
sudo nano /var/www/example1.com/public_html/index.html
Now add the below lines to 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.
sudo chown -R www-data: /var/www/example1.com
Now, regular user can modify files in our web directories without any issues.
Create Virtual Host Files
By default on Ubuntu machine, Apache Virtual Host configuration files are located at /etc/apache2/sites-available directory. 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. It will recommend that the name in the file is the same as the domain name.
Now, We will enable virtual host file by creating symbolic links to the /etc/apache2/sites-enabled directory.
In Ubuntu systems you can create symbolic links either by a2ensite tool or can create manually. To create using a2ensite 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:
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 :
Conclusion
We have shown you how to set up Apache Virtual Hosts on Ubuntu 22.04 system. In this tutorial we created a virtual host for a single domain, you can repeat steps for multiple domains on a single machine.
If you have any question or feedback, feel free to leave a comment below.
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