[Apache] Creating virtual hosts with Apache Httpd web server.

Its common to see multiple project running on one machine. Sometimes, it looks great if every web application runs with its own domain name. I usually keep my hostname as rkg.test, and for projects xxxx.proj. If I have multiple projects lets say blog, forum etc. so I can keep them as blog.proj, forum.proj etc. Neat, isn't it.

Here are simple steps to make it work.
1. Open your hosts file - in C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts and add your domain to it. Add the lines at the end of file like this.
127.0.0.1 blog.proj
127.0.0.1 forum.proj

2. Make sure httpd.conf file has virtual hosting enabled. Either add virtual hosts in the same httpd.conf file or put them in a different file and use that. Lets keep them separate in another file and keep this line in httpd.conf
Include conf/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf

3. If already not present, create a folder in conf/ named extra and create a httpd-vhosts.conf file.

4. Add a line for enabling NameVirtualHost
NameVirtualHost *:80

5.  Add a virtual host by adding these lines in httpd-vhosts.conf file
<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerAdmin webmaster@blog.proj
    DocumentRoot "D:/pFiles/xampp/htdocs/blog.proj"
    ServerName blog.proj
    ErrorLog "logs/blog.proj-error.log"
    CustomLog "logs/blog.proj.log" common
</VirtualHost>

6. Similarly add one more for forum.proj
<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerAdmin webmaster@forum.proj
    DocumentRoot "D:/pFiles/xampp/htdocs/forum.proj"
    ServerName forum.proj
    ErrorLog "logs/forum.proj-error.log"
    CustomLog "logs/forum.proj.log" common
</VirtualHost>

7. Restart your apache. And open blog.proj and forum.proj in your browser.

Simple enough. Isn't it?

Until next time, C ya. Enjoy.