Setting Up Apache Virtual Host Support

Overview

Notes on setting up VritualHost support in CentOS 5.8 without using the buggy GUI. CentOS 5.8 is a little outdated at the time of this writing, but a lot of managed hosting still runs on it, so here we are.

Add Name Based VirtualHost Support

Open /et/httpd/conf/http.conf for editing as a Root level user.

 
vim /etc/httpd/conf/http.conf

Look for the comment line "Use name-based virtual hosting and update it as follows:

#
# Use name-based virtual hosting.
#
NameVirtualHost *:80

Add support for multiple virtual host files

Add the following to the bottom of /etc/httpd/conf/http.conf to enable support for managing virtual hosts in multiple files stored in the directory /etc/httpd/conf/vhosts.

#
# Store virtual host configurations in individual files with the extension .conf.
#
Include /etc/httpd/conf/vhosts/*.conf

Create a directory for the vhost.conf files

mkdir /etc/httpd/conf/vhosts
chown root:root /etc/httpd/conf/vhosts

Create at least one virtual host

Create a at least one virtual host configuration. In this example I store all the sites in folders based on their domain name, like /var/www/vhosts/example.com. Web files are stored in the folder /var/www/vhosts/example.com/httpdocs and logs are stored locally in the directory /var/www/vhosts/example.com/logs because that's how Plesk does it and I often find myself mimicking Plesk servers. I prefix file names with digits to control which order they are loaded.

cd /etc/httpd/conf/vhosts
vim 000.example.com.conf

#
# A plausible virtual host definition by way of example
#
# Virtual host example.com

        ServerName example.com
        DocumentRoot /var/www/vhosts/example.com/httpdocs
        ErrorLog /var/www/vhosts/example.com/logs/error_log
        TransferLog /var/www/vhosts/example.com/logs/access_log
        DirectoryIndex index.php
        
                Options ExecCGI FollowSymLinks Includes IncludesNOEXEC SymLinksIfOwnerMatch
                AllowOverride all
        

Add vhost files as needed.

Run configtest and reload

/etc/init.d/httpd configtest

If configtest returns Syntax OK, it's probably safe to reload, but not always.

/etc/init.d/httpd reload

See Also

[[HowToAddAVirtualHostToApache|Working with VirtualHosts on Debian]]