Setting up Apache Virtual Hosts on an Ubuntu Server

Virtual hosts allow you to host multiple websites on a single server. This can be useful if you want to host multiple websites on a single instance, or if you want to run multiple versions of a website (e.g. staging and production).

In this tutorial, we'll go through the steps of setting up Apache virtual hosts on an Ubuntu server.

1. Install Apache:

First, make sure that Apache is installed on your server. If it's not already installed, you can install it with the following command:

sudo apt-get install apache2

2. Enable Apache's virtual host module:

Next, we need to enable Apache's virtual host module. This can be done with the following command:

sudo a2enmod vhost_alias

3. Create a new virtual host file:

Next, we'll create a new virtual host file for each website that we want to host. These files can be placed in the /etc/apache2/sites-available directory.

To create a new virtual host file, copy the default virtual host file and modify it to suit your needs. For example:

sudo cp /etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default.conf /etc/apache2/sites-available/example.com.conf

Then, open the new virtual host file in a text editor and modify it to specify the document root (i.e. the directory containing the website's files) and the server name:

<VirtualHost *:80>
  ServerName example.com
  ServerAlias www.example.com
  DocumentRoot /var/www/example.com/public_html
  <Directory /var/www/example.com/public_html>
    AllowOverride All
  </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

Be sure to replace example.com with the actual domain name of your website.

4. Enable the new virtual host:

To enable the new virtual host, use the following command:

sudo a2ensite example.com.conf

5. Restart Apache:

Finally, restart Apache to apply the changes:

sudo systemctl restart apache2

That's it! You should now be able to access your website at the specified domain name.