Setting up virtual host in Linux for Apache server

Normally, to browse our website which is hosted in a local server(e.g. Apache) we need to write the website path something localhost/blog/index.php which is fine but not much convenient. Beside, this doesn’t look that much like real web address. What if we can access that browser something like, dev.blog.com? Won’t it be great? To achieve this we need to create a virtual host which will virtually make host like dev.blog.com that can be access through our browser. Here are the steps to create a virtual host:

Step 1. Open terminal go to /etc/apache2/sites-available directory using the following command
cd /etc/apache2/sites-available

Step 2. Open a new file with .conf extension. e.g. blog.conf with the following command
sudo vim blog.conf

Step 3. Paste the following code(Root permission required) in the .conf file:

NameVirtualHost *:8080
Listen 8080

<VirtualHost *:8080>
    ServerAdmin example@domain.com
    ServerName dev.blog.com
    ServerAlias dev.blog.com
    DocumentRoot /var/www/blog/public

    <Directory /var/www/blog/public/>
            Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
            AllowOverride All
            Order allow,deny
            allow from all
            Require all granted
    </Directory>

    LogLevel debug
    ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/blog_error.log
    CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/blog_access.log combined
</VirtualHost>

Here, ServerAdmin is the admin’s contacts. ServerName is the url you want to access the site from browser. DocumentRoot is the root directory of your project. <Directory /var/www/blog/public> here /var/www/blog/public is also my project’s root directory where the index.php file is located

Step 4. Close the file and run the following command in terminal to enable the created virtual host:
sudo a2ensite blog.conf

Then reload the server with the following command:
sudo service apache2 reload

So, the virtual host is created and enabled now. If we enter dev.blog.com in our browser now it won’t show our site yet because the we have created the virtual host but that host is not known by our machine’s browser. To make it known to our machine we have to add our created virtual host’s URL into our host file(this is not required if you have bought a domain). So, let’s continue.

Step 5. Open the hosts file at /etc directory
sudo vim /etc/hosts Add the following line in the hosts file:
127.0.0.1 dev.blog.com

Step 6. Save and enter dev.blog.com in any browser’s address bar, then HIT!

Our site is in dev.blog.com!! We are ready to GO :)