11.5. Setting Up Virtual Hosts

The Apache HTTP Server's built in virtual hosting allows the server to provide different information based on which IP address, hostname, or port is being requested.

To create a name-based virtual host, find the virtual host container provided in /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf as an example, remove the hash sign (that is, #) from the beginning of each line, and customize the options according to your requirements as shown in Example 11.80, “Sampe virtual host configuration”.

Example 11.80. Sampe virtual host configuration

NameVirtualHost penguin.example.com:80

<VirtualHost penguin.example.com:80>
    ServerAdmin [email protected]
    DocumentRoot /www/docs/penguin.example.com
    ServerName penguin.example.com:80
    ErrorLog logs/penguin.example.com-error_log
    CustomLog logs/penguin.example.com-access_log common
</VirtualHost>

Note that ServerName must be a valid DNS name assigned to the machine. The <VirtualHost> container is highly customizable, and accepts most of the directives available within the main server configuration. Directives that are not supported within this container include User and Group, which were replaced by SuexecUserGroup.

Note: Changing the Port Number

If you configure a virtual host to listen on a non-default port, make sure you update the Listen directive in the global settings section of the /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf file accordingly.

To activate a newly created virtual host, the web server has to be restarted first. Refer to Section 11.2.3, “Restarting the Service” for more information on how to restart the httpd service.